| NSF Org: |
CNS Division Of Computer and Network Systems |
| Recipient: |
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| Initial Amendment Date: | June 30, 2014 |
| Latest Amendment Date: | June 30, 2014 |
| Award Number: | 1422965 |
| Award Instrument: | Standard Grant |
| Program Manager: |
Shannon Beck
CNS Division Of Computer and Network Systems CSE Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering |
| Start Date: | July 1, 2014 |
| End Date: | June 30, 2019 (Estimated) |
| Total Intended Award Amount: | $499,691.00 |
| Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $499,691.00 |
| 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: |
111 Cummington Mall Boston MA US 02215-2411 |
| 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): | Secure &Trustworthy Cyberspace |
| 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
In order to establish a secure communication channel, each communicating party needs some method to authenticate the other, lest it unwittingly establish a channel with the adversary instead. Current techniques for authentication often rely on passwords and/or the public-key infrastructure (PKI). Both of these methods have considerable drawbacks since passwords are frequently breached, and PKI relies on central authorities which have proven to be less than reliable. Thus there is a need to use other sources of information for the communicating parties to authenticate each other. Such information should be at least partially unavailable to the adversary since the adversary can pretend to be one of the parties. Many natural sources of such information such as visual passwords or physical tokens are noisy, and don't give the same result each time they are accessed.
This project investigates new techniques for using realistic noisy sources in authentication, without necessarily reconciling the values. It combines ideas from a variety of related lines of research, including information reconciliation, secure computation, password-based key agreement, program obfuscation, and locality-sensitive hashing. If successful, it will lead to better authentication solutions than are currently deployed. The investigators have contributed to standardization work in professional organizations like IEEE and ITEF, and have collaborated with industry.
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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.
Our world is increasingly relying on cryptography. We use it when logging in to our on-line accounts, using our credits cards, surfing on-line, or messaging friends. Cryptocurrencies use it to secure transactions. Large companies use it to provide valuable services to users while protecting their privacy. This project developed algorithms to make cryptography more user-friendly, more secure, and more efficient.
In particular, the project developed techniques to authenticate users from biometric data, reducing the reliance on passwords, while at the same time not storing any biometric data, thus enhancing security and privacy. Our results laid theoretical groundwork for iris-based authentication that does not incur the risks of storing the iris template.
One of the challenges in secure communication between parties that have no prior relationship (for example, cars that are in close proximity on a road) is authentication (for example, knowing that you are talking to a car that is nearby rather than one far away). This project developed authentication techniques that require as little as possible to bootstrap the communication: it is possible to bootstrap from a small amount of information that the communicating parties know more accurately than potential attackers (in the example of cars, the local road conditions or exact radio signals).
In many authentication scenarios, an attacker can attempt to use brute-force search (for example, trying all possible passwords). This project developed methods to make brute-force search prohibitively expensive for the attacker while keeping authentication delay reasonable for the honest participants.
The project also developed techniques for secure database outsourcing. When data storage is outsourced, as in today's cloud computing systems, the remote systems for data storage may come under attack or be subverted. The data owners need to know that their queries on the data are answered correctly and, in some cases, that the data remains private. This project improved the performance of data storage systems that prove the correctness of the data they store. This project also developed new techniques for protecting the privacy of the data. Our techniques have been incorporated into anonymous credential systems, which order to enable authorization of access rights without revealing private data.
One particular application for outsourced data storage in which both correctness and privacy are important is the Internet's Domain Name System (DNS), which converts human-readable computer names (such as www.bu.edu) to numerical addresses that are used for routing. DNS stores and serves the data necessary for such a conversion. This project developed techniques to improve correctness and privacy guarantees for DNS.
The same techniques were also incorporated by a number of projects that protect user privacy on instant messaging systems (some of which had previously used insecure solutions). These techniques are being developed into an internet standard.
Another application of outsourced data storage is in cryptocurrencies, which must store records of transactions and balances in a publicly verifiable manner. We have demonstrated how to apply our outsourced data storage methods to improve the efficiency of cryptocurrencies.
Most cryptocurrencies are currently very energy inefficient, because they are secured via a "proof of work" -- every participant must perform a lot of computation (thus spending a lot of energy) in order to make sure than no single participant can hijack the cryptocurrency and thus lie about the balances. We have developed two tools that have helped launched new, more energy efficient cryptocurrencies.
One tool is called "proof of space" (to replace a proof of work). It requires participants to commit a lot of storage instead of a lot of work in order to ensure security. Since storage is passive and does not consume energy, this tool enables a more energy-efficient cryptocurrency.
The other tool is a verifiable random function (a few have been known before, but ours is the most practical), which enables cryptocurrencies that achieve security via consensus of a small randomly selected committee rather than proof of work by everybody, again reducing energy consumption.
We have also developed a method for certifying the correctness of RSA keys, which, in particular, is a crucial component of a system for off-chain cryptocurrency transactions, which can reduce latency and increase privacy compared to on-chain transactions.
In addition to the above work, we discovered theoretical methods that enable rigorous proofs of security of certain cryptographic constructions that had been previously analyzed only heuristically. These methods were used by another project to develop a new algorithm for zero-knowledge proofs. This new algorithm is based on hard problems on lattices, which are believed to be unbreakable even by quantum computers.
Last Modified: 09/25/2019
Modified by: Leonid Reyzin
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