| NSF Org: |
CCF Division of Computing and Communication Foundations |
| Recipient: |
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| Initial Amendment Date: | July 30, 2012 |
| Latest Amendment Date: | July 30, 2012 |
| Award Number: | 1218461 |
| Award Instrument: | Standard Grant |
| Program Manager: |
Jack S. Snoeyink
CCF Division of Computing and Communication Foundations CSE Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering |
| Start Date: | September 1, 2012 |
| End Date: | August 31, 2016 (Estimated) |
| Total Intended Award Amount: | $480,182.00 |
| Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $480,182.00 |
| Funds Obligated to Date: |
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| History of Investigator: |
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| Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
1 SILBER WAY BOSTON MA US 02215-1703 (617)353-4365 |
| Sponsor Congressional District: |
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| Primary Place of Performance: |
881 Commonwealth Avenue Boston MA US 02215-1300 |
| Primary Place of
Performance Congressional District: |
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| Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): |
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| Parent UEI: |
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| NSF Program(s): | Algorithmic Foundations |
| Primary Program Source: |
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| Program Reference Code(s): |
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| Program Element Code(s): |
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| Award Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Fund Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Assistance Listing Number(s): | 47.070 |
ABSTRACT
Traditionally, cryptographic algorithms and protocols are geared towards protecting against attacks that interact with the designed algorithms via well specified interfaces (such as I/O and communication). However, the increasingly sophisticated ways in which computing devices are currently used completely shatter the traditional boundaries between the attacker and the "private internals" of the cryptographic algorithm under attack. Algorithms are run over small and exposed machines that leak information on their internal state; they are transported to other, potentially adversarial machines which may inspect all the internal state and also misreport the result; their code is exposed and subject to adversarial tinkering.
This project is aimed at developing new algorithmic and analytical techniques for dealing with this new reality. This includes cryptographic algorithms and protocols that are resilient to leakage from and tampering with the internal states of the host machines, program obfuscation techniques, and techniques for verifying computation done on untrusted machines. A basic premise of this project is that new analytical techniques, that no longer treat the adversary as black-box, are essential. Consequently, special effort is dedicated to developing such techniques.
The project tackles a set of problems that are central to the security of modern computer systems and consequently also to the well-being and stability of modern society. But even disregarding practical applicability, the tackled problems lie at the heart of our understanding of the notion of computation, the interplay between code and data, and the ability to algorithmically "understand" arbitrary code.
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PROJECT OUTCOMES REPORT
Disclaimer
This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.
The goal of the project was to develop new cryptographic algorithms, analytical tools, and concepts that will help address the new immense challenges that face our society in terms of protecting the security of our information and society, while preserving the freedoms and privacy of individuals. Indeed, our current use of information and computing systems completely obliterate the traditional physical boundaries between the “local and trusted” and the “external and untrusted”. Instead, the separation is more “logical” and has to be enforced by “software agents” and their interaction with other “software agents”.
The project made advances in the following four directions:
- Significant advances were made in constructing mechanisms for cryptographically masking (or, obfuscating) computer programs. Such mechanisms can greatly help secure software agents in a hostile computing environments. The projects provides new measures of security for program obfuscation, new constructions, and numerous new uses and applications of program obfuscation. Some of these implications go beyond cryptography and computer science, and have implications on game theory, mechanism design, finance and economics.
- New mechanisms were invented that allow a low-end client to verify the integrity and veracity of massive data sets and complex computations done in remote and untrusted data centers. Some of these mechanisms also provide protection of the privacy of the data, the computations, and the results.
- New mechanism were proposed for designing software that is able to preserve secrecy and integrity of data and computations even when the software is run on hardware that is ``leaky’’ – namely it allows an external attacker to mount “side channel attacks” that measure some physical side-effects of the computation, such as power consumption, delay, electromagnetic radiation etc. Indeed, such attacks are a devastating and inevitable part of the modern computing world where computation is done on small and vulnerable devices.
- New proof techniques were invented that allow for asserting security of algorithms and protocols that were previously out of reach. In particular the notion of extractability in cryptographic primitives was formalized and constructions (as well as impossibility results) were proven.
Last Modified: 12/01/2016
Modified by: Ran Canetti
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