Please note that advertised projects are sample projects and prospective applicants are not required to apply to one of the advertised projects, but are welcome to discuss broader research interests with the academic named in the advert - and/or to apply with their own research proposal.
The Centre for Doctoral Training in Cyber Security for the Everyday at Royal Holloway University of London seeks to recruit a PhD student to work on applications of time and delay in cryptographic protocols.
The concept of delay has proved to be very useful in security protocols. Indeed, there are several primitives in the cryptographic literature that have considered the component of time and delay in order to offer additional security guarantees. For instance, time-lock puzzles (TLPs) and timed-released crypto schemes allow you to encrypt a message to the future. Furthermore, proof of work schemes and verifiable delay functions (VDFs) have been designed so that it can be shown that a specific delay has occurred. These primitives can enhance the fairness of cryptographic protocols, and have found applications in the decentralised setting, e.g., for use in randomness beacons.
There are still some exciting challenges in this area of research. For instance, a) the performance and usability of some of these primitives needs to be improved, b) there is a need to diversify the security assumptions underpinning their security, in order to be quantum-safe, and c) there is a need to reduce, if not remove, the reliance on some trust assumptions, since many applications are in the decentralised setting.
The goal of this project is to explore one or more of these challenges, contributing to a very active area of research.
The Information Security Group (ISG) at Royal Holloway has a strong track record in cryptographic research, including algorithm design and analysis, post-quantum cryptography, homomorphic encryption and applications of secure computation.
Applicants are expected to have a background in mathematics, computer science, or a related discipline. Prospective applicants are welcome to contact Dr Elizabeth Quaglia to discuss the project. [Email Address Removed]
Continue with Facebook
