Our regular Crypto Café seminars take place every other Thursday,10 am-10:50 am during the semester. We invite local and international experts on topics in Mathematics and Computer Science related to Cryptography and Information Security.
Come and join us for freshly brewed coffee and interesting conversations on the most exciting topics in cryptography.
Where: SE-43 (Charles E. Schmidt College of Science) - Room 215 and via Zoom
You can catch up on any missed meetings by following the below link:
Spring, 2025, Crypto Cafe Schedule:
February 27, 2025, 10:00 am +Zoom (click here)
Speaker: Dominic Gold (Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory) FLYER
Title: Deterministic Random Bit Generators in Cryptography
Abstract: Side-channel attacks (SCA) present a serious threat to cryptographic implementations, including those designed for post-quantum security. This talk introduces the first Correlation Power Analysis (CPA) attack on an industry-grade hardware implementation of ML-DSA within a Silicon Root of Trust framework. Our attack exploits side-channel leakage from the modular reduction process following the Number Theoretic Transform-based polynomial multiplication. By leveraging leakage from a unique reduction algorithm and the zeroization mechanism used for securely erasing sensitive data, we demonstrate secret key extraction using only 10,000 power traces. This attack compromises the integrity of the root of trust, enabling signature forgery for certificate generation. Our findings highlight critical vulnerabilities in commercially deployed post-quantum cryptographic systems and emphasize the need for robust countermeasures.
March 13, 2025, 10:00 am
+Zoom (click here)
Speaker: Merve Karabulut, Florida Atlantic University FLYER
Title: Efficient CPA Attack on Hardware Implementation of ML-DSA in Post-Quantum Root of Trust
Abstract: Side-channel attacks (SCA) present a serious threat to cryptographic implementations, including those designed for post-quantum security. This talk introduces the first Correlation Power Analysis (CPA) attack on an industry-grade hardware implementation of ML-DSA within a Silicon Root of Trust framework. Our attack exploits side-channel leakage from the modular reduction process following the Number Theoretic Transform-based polynomial multiplication. By leveraging leakage from a unique reduction algorithm and the zeroization mechanism used for securely erasing sensitive data, we demonstrate secret key extraction using only 10,000 power traces. This attack compromises the integrity of the root of trust, enabling signature forgery for certificate generation. Our findings highlight critical vulnerabilities in commercially deployed post-quantum cryptographic systems and emphasize the need for robust countermeasures.
February 13, 2025, 10:00 am +Zoom (click here)
Speaker: Ivana Trummová, Ph.D. candidate, Czech Technical University (CTU) in Prague, Czech Republic FLYER
Title: Human Factors in Cryptography
Abstract: Cryptography can be considered a part of mathematics or computer science, therefore an exact and technical field. On the other hand, cryptography is created, implemented and used by people, who have to collaborate, communicate, and are prone to making mistakes. In my work, I am researching the non-technical aspects of cryptography that affect security. In one of my previous projects we have mapped the cryptography ecosystem, described the systemic barriers that hinder cryptography adoption. In another interview study, we found out how developers implement cryptographic standards and how an ideal standard specification should look like. Now I am studying the processes of cryptography competitions and their impacts on cryptographic community.
Speaker Bio: Ivana Trummová is a cryptography researcher and a teacher focusing on human factors in security and inter-disciplinary research. She is currently pursuing a PhD in Cryptography at the Faculty of Information Technology, Czech Technical University (CTU) in Prague, Czech Republic. She also works as a teacher assistant at CTU, teaching courses on cryptography, mathematics and cybersecurity, and recently also a new course called "Human Factors in Cryptography and Security", which aims to bring an inter-disciplinary point of view to computer science students.
January 30, 2025, 10:00 am +Zoom (click here)
Speaker: Eliana Carozza (PhD researcher at IRIF, Université Paris Cité, France)
Title: Faster Signatures from MPC-in-the-Head
Abstract: The construction of signature schemes using the MPC-in-the-head paradigm is revisited, leading to two main contributions:
– It is observed that prior signatures within the MPC-in-the-head paradigm require a salted version of the GGM puncturable pseudorandom function (PPRF) to mitigate collision attacks. A new efficient PPRF construction is presented, which is provably secure in the multi-instance setting. The security analysis, conducted in the ideal cipher model, represents a core technical contribution. Unlike previous constructions that relied on hash functions, the proposed PPRF uses only a fixed-key block cipher, resulting in significant efficiency gains, with speed improvements ranging from 12× to 55× for a recent signature scheme (Joux and Huth, Crypto’24). This improved PPRF has the potential to enhance the performance of various MPC-in-the-head signatures.
– A new signature scheme is introduced, based on the regular syndrome decoding assumption and a novel protocol for the MPC-in-the-head paradigm. The proposed scheme achieves a substantial reduction in communication overhead compared to earlier works. Despite its conceptual simplicity, the security analysis involves intricate combinatorial considerations.
January 16, 2025, 10:00 am +Zoom (click here)
Speaker: Edoardo Persichetti, Ph.D. Florida Atlantic University
Title: On Digital Signatures from Cryptographic Group Actions”
Abstract: Cryptography based on group actions has been studied for a long time. In recent years, however, the area has seen a revival, partially due to its role in post-quantum cryptography. In this talk, we present our work on a unified taxonomy of a variety of techniques used to design digital signature schemes. We describe all techniques in a single fashion, show how they impact the performance of the resulting protocols and analyse how different techniques can be combined for optimal performance.
