Abstract: 

I will start this talk by presenting a novel class of symmetric primitives, which in contrast to classical input-length-preserving block ciphers and permutations, and input-length-compressing compressing hash functions, expand the size of their inputs. Through the new designs of forkciphers and general expanding pseudorandom functions (PRFs), I will demonstrate the power of expanding primitives to enable higher security and efficiency in a wide class of applications, such as:

- Key Derivation (in Signal-like messaging protocols) and Pseudo-random Number Generation
- Encryption, Authentication and Authenticated Encryption
- IoT-to-Cloud Computation
- Lightweight-device communication

Finally, I will conclude the talk by presenting novel research directions in the area of secure theory and applications or expanding primitives in cryptography.

BIO:

Elena Andreeva is a tenure-track Assistant Professor in cryptography in the Security and Privacy Unit at TU Wien, Austria. Prior to this, she was an Assistant Professor in the Cyber Security Group at DTU, Denmark and a Research Expert in the COSIC Research Group, KU Leuven, Belgium. She completed her PhD on the topic: “Domain Extenders for Cryptographic Hash Functions” under the supervision of prof. Bart Preneel at KU Leuven, Belgium.

Elena is an expert in cryptography with a special focus on theory and development of provably secure cryptographic constructions for secure data communication, storage and private computation. Her research focus is on authenticated encryption, expanding PRFs, hash functions, key derivation, privacy-friendly security protocols, and cryptography for blockchains. Elena is has been actively involved in the NIST standardization processes SHA-3, CAESAR and the Lightweight Authenticated Encryption both with design contributions: the hash function LANE, the authenticated encryption families COLM, ForkAE and PRIMATEs; and with a number of analysis contributions. The COLM authenticated encryption design is a winner in the category for robust security designs in the CAESAR competition.

Elena’s recent research focuses on the development of theory and applications of: 1. Expanding symmetric cryptographic primitives and 2. Privacy-friendly symmetric cryptography.