©ERC
WHAT IS CRYPTOSYSTEMS ABOUT?
Many of today’s critical infrastructures, such as power grids or cellular networks, are distributed systems which are comprised of autonomous nodes connected over a peer-to-peer network. A central goal in distributed computing is to implement such systems in a fault-tolerant manner to avoid single points of failure. Fault-tolerant systems remain secure and available even if some minority of nodes crashes or spreads incorrect information. Distributed systems frequently rely on cryptography, which has proven a powerful tool for robustness and scalability.
However, despite its benefits, cryptography can incur performance penalties or lead to vulnerabilities when not used cautiously. Both of these aspects significantly complicate its use in practice. As a result, many real-world systems use cryptography sparingly, thus lacking robustness and scalability. Using cutting-edge cryptography,
CRYPTOSYSTEMS will significantly advance the resilience and efficiency of distributed algorithms at the heart of many distributed systems. The objectives are as follows: (i) Develop and explore formal security models for cryptographic distributed algorithms that accurately reflect real-world threats. (ii) Apply cryptography to design robust and scalable distributed algorithms that tolerate the theoretical limits of faults. (iii) Develop novel cryptography, such as compact signatures and communication-efficient distributed randomness generation routines to boost the efficiency and security of distributed algorithms.
These innovations will provide a major step toward the wide-scale deployment of secure and scalable distributed infrastructures.
©ERC
WHAT IS CRYPTOSYSTEMS ABOUT?
Many of today’s critical infrastructures, such as power grids or cellular networks, are distributed systems which are comprised of autonomous nodes connected over a peer-to-peer network. A central goal in distributed computing is to implement such systems in a fault-tolerant manner to avoid single points of failure. Fault-tolerant systems remain secure and available even if some minority of nodes crashes or spreads incorrect information. Distributed systems frequently rely on cryptography, which has proven a powerful tool for robustness and scalability.
However, despite its benefits, cryptography can incur performance penalties or lead to vulnerabilities when not used cautiously. Both of these aspects significantly complicate its use in practice. As a result, many real-world systems use cryptography sparingly, thus lacking robustness and scalability. Using cutting-edge cryptography,
CRYPTOSYSTEMS will significantly advance the resilience and efficiency of distributed algorithms at the heart of many distributed systems. The objectives are as follows: (i) Develop and explore formal security models for cryptographic distributed algorithms that accurately reflect real-world threats. (ii) Apply cryptography to design robust and scalable distributed algorithms that tolerate the theoretical limits of faults. (iii) Develop novel cryptography, such as compact signatures and communication-efficient distributed randomness generation routines to boost the efficiency and security of distributed algorithms.
These innovations will provide a major step toward the wide-scale deployment of secure and scalable distributed infrastructures.
