Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

Cryptography is the field that uses mathematical techniques to secure information. The rapid rise of computer and communications technology, especially the widespread use of the Internet, has greatly increased the demand for such techniques. For example, trillions of dollars of currency exchanges are carried out each day, and these must be encoded in such a way that malicious parties cannot view or tamper with them (even if they are sent over publicly accessible networks). Symmetric-key cryptographic primitives such as block ciphers, hash functions, and stream ciphers are fundamental components of the infrastructure that enables such transactions to be carried out securely and efficiently. My research has been dedicated to the analysis of symmetric-key primitives for the past 10 years. Over this time, I have developed a series of new techniques (algorithms) for analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of important classes of primitives. This proposal is focused on the full development of my techniques into a cryptographic toolkit that can be readily used by other researchers who are studying existing primitives or designing new ones. I also propose to extend the rigour of the standard analysis of such primitives by removing simplifying assumptions that can hide weaknesses.