Research Projects

The advent of quantum computing has significant implications on cryptography, affecting both public-key and symmetric-key cryptographic primitives. While quantum computers can completely break current public-key cryptography, they reduce the security of symmetric-key cryptographic primitives to half the bit-security they have against classical adversaries. New-generation public-key algorithms have been designed to be resistant against powerful quantum adversaries, but analyzing the effects of quantum computers on symmetric-key primitives, especially lightweight ones, has received less attention. Fixing the reduced security of lightweight symmetric-key primitives requires scaling the primitive parameters by a factor of two, which can lead to efficiency loss and security breakdowns. The proposal aims to analyze how quantum cryptanalysis affects the security of lightweight cryptographic primitives, find systematic methodologies to improve crypto primitives' security while optimizing their lightweightness, and consider novel cryptographic primitives for efficient and secure implementations. This project aims to envision new directions in designing and implementing quantum safe cryptographic primitives for protecting digital security.