CAREER: Foundations of Unclonable Cryptography

随着技术的发展，对用户敏感信息的保护提出了新的密码学挑战。经典计算在解决某些加密挑战方面具有特定的局限性。量子力学的出现提供了一个独特的机会来探索可以克服这些限制的替代方法，并通过利用量子力学的不可克隆原理提供增强的安全性保证。不可克隆意味着不可能创造出量子信息的精确副本。这为解决仅使用传统计算机无法解决的问题提供了一条有希望的途径。这个项目的首要目标是开发不可克隆密码学的基础。该项目伴随着一项全面的教育计划，通过新课程开发、座谈会系列、本科速成班，让本科生参与研究，并伴随着利用UCSB早期学者计划和加州大学加州桥计划的招聘工作。与该项目相关的主要目标有三个。第一个目标是提出和研究加密方案和数字签名的新概念，这些方案和数字签名具有保护密钥的鲁棒保证。该方法利用了一个使用量子态的证人加密过程。第二个目标是提出和研究新的加密概念，通过利用公共验证增强的伪随机函数的属性来防止未经授权的软件分发。第三个也是最后一个目标是提出新的框架、证明技术和黑盒分离，这将导致对不可克隆密码学领域的更深入理解，并在概念上与经典密码学的不可区分混淆有相似之处。这些方向有望将不可克隆密码学置于更坚实的理论基础之上。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Advancements in technology bring forth new cryptographic challenges for safeguarding the sensitive information of users. Classical computing has specific limitations in addressing certain cryptographic challenges. The emergence of quantum mechanics provides a unique opportunity to explore alternative approaches that can overcome these limitations and offer enhanced security guarantees, by exploiting the no-cloning principle of quantum mechanics. No-cloning means that it is impossible to create an exact copy of quantum information. This offers a promising avenue to tackle problems that are otherwise impossible to solve solely using classical computers. The overarching goal of this project is to develop the foundations of unclonable cryptography. The project is accompanied by a comprehensive education plan to engage undergraduate students in research through new course development, colloquia series, undergraduate crash courses, and accompanied by recruitment efforts that leverage the UCSB Early Scholars program and the California Cal-Bridge program.There are three main aims associated with the project. The first aim is to propose and study novel notions of encryption schemes and digital signatures equipped with robust guarantees for protecting secret keys. The approach exploits a witness encryption procedure using a quantum state. The second aim is to propose and study new cryptographic notions to protect against the unauthorized distribution of software, by leveraging properties of pseudorandom functions augmented by public verification. The third and final aim is to propose new frameworks, proof techniques, and black-box separations that will lead to a deeper understanding of the area of unclonable cryptography, and having conceptual parallels with indistinguishability obfuscation of classical cryptography. These directions are expected to place unclonable cryptography on more solid theoretical footing.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.