CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE AWARD 2024
Aikata Aikata (Technische Universität Graz) erhält den Critical Infrastructure Award 2024 für ihr Dissertationsprojekt Lattice-based cryptography with focus on Homomorphic Encryption and Post-quantum Encryption.
Abstract der Dissertation
As quantum computing progresses, classical public-key cryptography is at risk of becoming obsolete. Schemes such as RSA and ECC rely on problems that quantum computers can solve efficiently using Shor’s algorithm, making secure communication vulnerable. While Post Quantum Cryptography (PQC) provides good alternatives, its implementations face significant performance and resource constraints, requiring large memory, computational power, and hardware integration.
This research addresses these challenges by proposing efficient, compact, high- performance PQC architecture design methodologies. A key contribution is the development of a unified cryptoprocessor that integrates CRYSTALS-Kyber (Key Encapsulation Mechanism) and CRYSTALS-Dilithium (Digital Signature Algorithm), the two NIST-standardized schemes into a single efficient hardware. By leveraging synergies between the two types of schemes, this work reduces area and power consumption while maintaining security. To further enhance practical deployment, this research further delves into techniques that improve resistance against side-channel attacks. Thus, paving the way for making PQC practical and efficient for real-world adoption.
While PQC ensures secure communication against quantum threats, data privacy remains a critical concern in cloud computing. Conventional encryption methods protect data in transit and storage but expose it during computation. FHE (Fully Homomorphic Encryption) solves this by enabling computation directly on encrypted data, ensuring end-to-end security. However, FHE operations remain orders of magnitude slower than plain computations. This research significantly bridges this gap and presents a chiplet-based architecture that offers scalable and high-performance encrypted computing, reducing the computational bottlenecks that have historically hindered FHE. It further dives into applications and security analysis of schemes enabling FHE.
Overall, by addressing the efficiency challenges in both PQC and FHE, this research lays the foundation for a future where digital security and privacy are not only quantum- resistant but also practical and accessible.
Die Preisträgerin
Aikata earned her Bachelor's degree in Computer Science and Engineering in 2020 from IIT Bhilai, India, where she developed an interest in cryptography under the supervision of Assistant Professor Dhiman Saha. She then obtained a Master's degree in Computer Science from TU Graz, Austria, in 2022, with her thesis on polynomial multipliers for PQC receiving the 1st prize from the TU Graz Forum Technology and Society. Motivated by this, she is currently pursuing her PhD at TU Graz under the supervision of Associate Professor Sujoy Sinha Roy. Her research focuses on efficient cryptographic accelerators for quantum-secure communication and privacy-preserving computation, in-cluding the development of unified PQC cryptoprocessors and high-perfor-mance FHE hardware.