Algorithms for High-Assurance in Cyber-Security

Project Summary

Authenticating data and results of computations in untrusted or adversarial environments is a fundamental task in cyber-security. This problem captures the security needs of many computing applications that exchange and use sensitive information in hostile and distributed computing settings, and its importance increases given the current trend in modern system design towards decentralized architectures with minimal trust assumptions.

This project is aiming to develop authentication techniques that enhance information assurance in various computing settings. Following an algorithmic approach, the goal is to develop secure, cost-efficient and scalable solutions that ensure authenticity of information in untrusted or pervasive environments as well as trustworthy computations in highly distributed or heterogeneous networked systems. Specific research topics include: a) advanced data authentication, exploring verification of information received by untrusted parties and focusing on expressiveness, efficiency, privacy and consistency, and b) secure distributed searching and computing, exploring information assurance and trustworthiness of computations in highly decentralized settings. Target applications of interest include: secure data processing in sensor networks, secure data management in outsourced file systems or peer-to-peer systems and secure data sharing in collaboration systems.

• Principal Investigator: Nikos Triandopoulos