News
Cryptology group news
New code breaking record for quantum-safe cryptography
A team of CWI cryptanalysts has set a new code breaking record for the lattice shortest vector problem (SVP) - a foundation for the security of next generation public-key cryptography, designed to be secure against quantum computers.
Léo Ducas wins ERC Starting Grant for quantum-safe cryptography
Léo Ducas from CWI's Cryptology Group is awarded an ERC Starting Grant of 1.5 million euro for research on quantum-safe cryptography. Most of today’s cryptographic methods will not be secure against attacks based on possible future quantum computers.
Gearing up for QCrypt 2020
The latest top results in quantum cryptography will be shared during the upcoming tenth anniversary edition of the QCrypt conference. Welcoming hundreds of visitors from science and industry, QCrypt 2020 will take place as an online event, jointly organized by CWI and the University of Amsterdam.
Leo Ducas (CWI Cryptology Group) involved in NIST Post-Quantum Cryptography Standardization Finalists
In its process to develop the first cryptographic standard to protect sensitive electronic data against the threat of quantum computers, the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) announced the finalists. Léo Ducas from CWI's Cryptology group is involved in several finalists of this standardization process.
Interview with Dijkstra Fellow David Chaum
David Chaum (1955) was awarded the Dijkstra Fellowship for his groundbreaking work in privacy and cryptology and the development of digital currency, which laid the technological basis for blockchain and bitcoin. This interview appeared in CWI’s staff magazine in April 2020.
Levchin prize for Marc Stevens’ groundbreaking work on hash functions
For their groundbreaking work on the security of collision resistant hash functions researchers Marc Stevens (CWI) and Xiaoyun Wang (Tsinghua University) were awarded one of the two 2020 Levchin Prizes for real-world cryptography.
David Chaum and Guido van Rossum awarded Dijkstra Fellowship
Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) will grant the honorary title ‘Dijkstra Fellow’ for the first time in its history. This edition the Dijkstra Fellowship will be awarded to David Chaum and Guido van Rossum.
IBM to deploy quantum-proof cryptography co-developed with CWI and RU
Together with CWI, RU and other international partners, IBM Research has developed quantum-safe algorithms for securing data. IBM has now implemented these algorithms in the world’s first quantum computing safe tape drive.
CWI researcher designs award-winning cryptographic lottery algorithm
Benjamin Wesolowski (CWI) developed a new key ingredient for cryptographic lottery machines and received the Best Young Researcher Paper Award at Eurocrypt 2019. His results can be used for more sustainable blockchain technology.
Researchers hail demise of online security algorithm
An international team of mathematicians has hailed the end of a variant of a code that is widely used to protect online transactions. The five researchers are from EPFL, CWI and the universities of Surrey and Passau.
Cryptographic security at the speed of light
When people who distrust each other want to securely cooperate, they can use cryptographic 'commitment schemes'. Max Fillinger (CWI) designed and analyzed relativistic commitment schemes. He defends his PhD thesis 'Bit-Commitments: Classical, Quantum and Non-Signaling' on 19 March.
Renowned scientists and policy advisors speak at CWI Lectures on Privacy and Security
Our privacy, a fundamental right, is threatened by surveillance and smart algorithms. Can our privacy be salvaged from 'intelligent' machines? During the CWI Lectures 2018 four renowned scientists and policy advisors discuss the state of the art in protecting privacy. Keynote speakers: Marc Rotenberg (USA), Jan Camenisch (Switzerland), Adam Smith (USA) and Ed Felten (USA), former advisor of Barack Obama.
Serge Fehr appointed as Professor Quantum Information Theory
Serge Fehr (CWI, UL) has been appointed as Professor Quantum Information Theory at the Leiden Mathematical Institute (MI) since 1 June 2018. His research is focused on quantum cryptology.
How to share sensitive information safely?
“Data protection is now in the news more often than ever before”, Thijs Veugen, a senior researcher at TNO and part-time seconded in CWI’s Cryptology group says in his recent TNO Time column. “What should a company do if it wants to share information?" "Organizations can use secure multi-party computation to securely link the most sensitive databases together.”
EU PROMETHEUS project started to develop quantum-safe cryptography
In January 2018 the international PROMETHEUS project has started – a new four-year European H2020 project to prepare ourselves for the threats of the post-quantum era. Dutch research partners in this international project are TNO and CWI.
CRYPTO 2017 Best Paper Award for breaking SHA-1 security standard
A team of researchers from CWI and Google have won the CRYPTO 2017 Best Paper Award for being the first to break the SHA-1 internet security standard in practice. Marc Stevens (CWI) explained this research during a plenary talk at CRYPTO 2017 in Santa Barbara (USA).
CWI and Google research team wins Pwnie Award for Best Cryptographic Attack
Researchers at CWI and Google have won the Pwnie Award for Best Cryptographic Attack at the BlackHat USA security conference. They were awarded the prize for being the first to break the SHA-1 internet security standard in practice.
Marc Stevens’ project awarded funding in ‘Big Data: real time ICT for logistics’ programme
NWO has granted five applications within the ‘Big Data: real time ICT for logistics’ research programme. CWI’s Marc Stevens is the main applicant of one of the five granted research projects: 'Secure scalable policy-enforced distributed data processing'.
Cécile Pierrot wins Cercle K2 Cybersecurity Trophy 2017
Cécile Pierrot from the Cryptology research group at CWI won the first Cybersecurity Trophy granted by Cercle K2. This French think tank awards prizes in 22 topics every two years. It aims at stimulating interdisciplinarity and promoting young researchers. The Cybersecurity Trophy 2017 rewarded Pierrot’s PhD thesis, which she defended at UPMC in Paris on 25 November 2016. The jury praised her for both theoretical and practical impacts of her results.
ERC Advanced Grant for CWI cryptographer Ronald Cramer
CWI cryptographer Ronald Cramer has been awarded an ERC Advanced Grant of 2.5 million euro for his proposal 'Algebraic Methods for Stronger Crypto'. He leads the Cryptology Research group at Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) in Amsterdam and is a full professor at the Mathematical Institute of Leiden University. The European Research Council awards these most prestigious personal grants to outstanding, well-established scientists with novel ideas towards high-risk, groundbreaking research that impacts both science and society at large.
CWI and Google announce first collision for Industry Security Standard SHA-1
'Industry deprecation proved to be too slow' Today, Thursday 23 February 2017, researchers at the Dutch research institute CWI and Google jointly announce that they have broken the SHA-1 internet security standard in practice. This industry standard is used for digital signatures and file integrity verification, which secure credit card transactions, electronic documents, GIT open-source software repositories and software distribution.
Cryptology researcher Marc Stevens awarded with Google research prize
CWI researcher Marc Stevens of the Cryptology research group has been awarded the Google Security Privacy and Anti-abuse applied award.
New attacks on location-based quantum cryptography
For secure communication of classified information, researchers want to deploy the sender’s location, so a receiver can be sure that a message is, for instance, really coming from the White House. Classic location-based methods are shown to be unsafe but location-based quantum cryptography seemed to have a chance.
Three articles from the Netherlands published in ERCIM News 106 on Cybersecurity
In July 2016, ERCIM News 106 was published: ercim-news.ercim.eu/en106. This issue featured a special theme on Cybersecurity, in which three articles from the Netherlands were published and one from Belgium. Another article from the Netherlands, on the 100th birthday of former CWI (MC) director and informatics pioneer Aad van Wijngaarden, was published in the Research & Society section.
Veni grants for Léo Ducas and Johannes Köster
The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) has awarded Veni grants to Léo Ducas and Johannes Köster of CWI.
First book on quantum-secure multi-party computation
Ronald Cramer (Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica), Ivan Damgard and Jesper Nielsen (Aarhus University) recently published the first book ever on information-theoretically secure multiparty computation (MPC) – a subfield of cryptography that describes security systems that cannot even be broken by quantum computers or unlimited computing power.
Researchers urge: industry standard SHA-1 should be retracted sooner
An international team of cryptanalysts urges the industry today that SHA-1 internet security standard should be retracted sooner, since the cost of breaking it is significantly lower than previously thought.
Vision on Quantum-Safe Encryption in WIRED and Quanta magazine
Research results of CWI cryptologists Ronald Cramer and Léo Ducas on quantum-safe encryption were discussed in an article on WIRED on 19 September 2015.
Marc Stevens keynote at Security in Times of Surveillance event
Marc Stevens (CWI) was one of the keynote speakers at the Eindhoven Institute for the Protection of Systems and Information (Ei/PSI) event on Security in Times of Surveillance on Friday 8 May 2015.
10-year anniversary for RISC crypto meetings
On 18 and 19 September the 10-year anniversary of the RISC seminar series on cryptography was celebrated with a two-day RISC Seminar on Theory of Cryptography at the Trippenhuis, home of the Royal Netherlands Academy o