PhD candidate: Shuang Wu, IMF/IE
Main supervisor: Professor Kristian Gjøsteen, IMF/IE
Co-supervisors: Professor Colin Boyd, IIK/IE
Overview:
Hash chains and digital signatures are cryptographic methods of ensuring the integrity of transaction data. There are many possible ways to design such mechanisms, providing different prop- erties of the resulting hash chains and many different subtle privacy properties. Other important aspects include efficiency and long-term security.
Outcomes:
The goal of this PhD project is to study different constructions for hash chains, signature schemes and their surrounding protocols and to analyse their combined properties from a cryptographic point of view, with emphasis on efficiency, privacy and anonymity. Modern methods of analysis will be applied to obtain high assurance of security. This project will be run in close conjunction with Projects 2 and 3. It will provide input on capabilities and various trade-offs for the applied projects. We expect Projects 4, 5 and 6 to provide context and inspiration for the theoretical cryptographic work.