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Publication date: 25 de February, 2025Quantum-assisted secure multi-party computation: universal composability and hardware assumptions
Since the emergence of quantum computation, the use of quantum resources promises disruptive advantages not only for high-performance computing but also for cryptography and security applications. There exists a great deal of applications, and as the field is constantly gaining more attention due to the technological advances that could enable them, it is important to have a clear picture on the relevance and the feasibility of these proposals. In this talk, we will first briefly present the “exotic” features of the quantum computing paradigm that can provide an advantage for certain computing and cryptographic tasks, in general. Then, we will focus on quantum cryptography, and we will go through some of the best-known examples where using quantum resources is — in theory — advantageous compared to using classical resources. In particular, we will see how key distribution and secure multi-party computation tasks can be implemented with information-theoretic security in the quantum setting. We will explain what are the challenges that one faces in practical implementations, and how these might limit the applicability of quantum protocols to very specific, yet relevant, cases. Finally, we will talk about the universally composable (UC) security of secure multi-party computation protocols, and attempt to determine the minimal requirements on the resources (classical and quantum) needed to achieve this very strong security guarantee. We will also analyze the applicability of a hardware security token, called a Physical Uncloneable Function (PUF), to UC-secure multi-party computation protocols, and we will aim at a fair comparison between classical and quantum PUFs.
| Date | 05/03/2025 2:00 pm |
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| Location | DI Seminars Room and Zoom |
| Host Bio | Chrysoula Vlachou is a Junior Researcher in the Security and Quantum Information Group (SQIG) at Instituto de Telecomunicações (IT) in Lisbon and at the Department of Mathematics of Instituto Superior Técnico with a CEEC-Individual grant from FCT, Portugal. Before that she was a post-doctoral researcher at the Center for Quantum Information and Communication (QuIC) at Université libre de Bruxelles in Belgium. She has a PhD in Physics (Doctoral program "Physics and Mathematics of Information") from Instituto Superior Técnico, Lisbon. She has worked on different aspects of quantum information theory and cryptography, such as quantum key distribution and secure two-party computation. Her research is currently focused on secure multi-party computation (quantum and classical), and in particular on the security assumptions needed for the construction of universally composable protocols. She is also interested in the applicability of hardware assumptions for security, especially of hardware tokens such as physically uncloneable functions; in the context of the exploratory project that she is currently coordinating she is studying the use of physically uncloneable functions (classical and quantum) in universally composable secure multi-party computation protocols. |