Distinguished Lecture: “How Cryptosystems Are Really Broken”

Speaker: Prof Adi Shamir, Weizmann Institute
UCL Contact: Steve Marchant (Visitors from outside UCL please email in advance).
Date/Time: 20 Jun 12, 16:00 - 18:00
Venue: Roberts 106 LT
Further Information:

Drinks Reception to follow in MPEB 5.10

Abstract

Most of the cryptosystems we currently use are highly secure, and cannot be broken by mathematical cryptanalysis. However, over the last fifteen years researchers have developed many types of physical attacks on their implementations which can easily bypass their mathematical security. In this talk Prof Shamir will survey some of the latest attacks, and show how difficult it is to build a truly secure communication systems. The talk will not require any prior knowledge in cryptanalysis.

Prof Adi Shamir

Professor Adi Shamir is an Israeli cryptographer who has made numerous contributions to the fields of cryptography and computer science. He was co-inventor of the RSA algorithm, co-inventor of the Feige-Fiat-Shamir identification scheme and one of the inventors of differential cryptanalysis. Prof Shamir obtained a BS degree in Mathematics from Tel Aviv University in 1973 and received MSc and PhD degrees in Computer Science from the Weizmann Institute in 1975 and 1977 respectively. He also received an honorary Doctor of Mathematics degree from the University of Waterloo and has been an invited professor at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris since 2006. He has received numerous awards for his work, including the Anna and Lajos Erdős Prize in Mathematics in 1983, the ACM Turing Prize in 2002, in recognition of his contributions to cryptography and the Israel Prize for Computer Sciences in 2008.