Dachman-Soled, Katz Receive Cisco Awards

Dana Dachman-Soled, an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Jonathan Katz, a professor in the Department of Computer Science, were recently awarded funding by Cisco for research proposals they submitted. Both Dachman-Soled and Katz have appointments in UMIACS and the Maryland Cybersecurity Center, where Katz serves as director.

Dachman-Soled was awarded $73,544 for her project "Analyzing the Robustness of Lattice-Based Schemes Against Side-Channel Attacks." Her work will focus on formally analyzing next-generation cryptosystems based on lattices in terms of their resistance to side-channel attacks, and on deriving concrete parameters necessary for the security of lattice cryptosystems in practice. Lattice-based cryptography has been receiving more attention lately due to its conjectured security against quantum computers. Dachman-Soled's analysis is expected to be especially valuable for implementations of such "post-quantum" schemes on constrained devices where minimizing parameters is a top priority.

"I am very excited to collaborate closely with the strong cryptography team at Cisco on this project. I hope my research will provide Cisco with guidance from a theoretical perspective as they prepare to make the switch to post-quantum cryptography," says Dachman-Soled.

Katz's project, "Design and Analysis of (Quantum-Resistant) Hash-Based Signatures," also addresses the development of next-generation cryptosystems with security against quantum computers, though from a different perspective. Cisco awarded him $68,694 in support of his work providing formal analysis and proofs of security for signature schemes based on cryptographic hash functions, including several schemes currently being considered for standardization. "I am thrilled to be able to apply theoretical principles to real-world problems of intrerest to Cisco," Katz stated, "and I look forward to working with Cisco researchers as part of this project."