Cryptography/Number Theory Talks at MSR: Adi Shamir

[Dan Shumow]

There are two talks by Adi Shamir next week, one on wednesday 8/27 and
the other on Friday 8/29. The abstracts are listed below.

Please contact me directly if you would like to attend, and we can
coordinate. If you would like to attend please try to contact me at
least one day in advance.

*****************************************************************************************************
WHO: Adi Shamir
AFFILIATION: Mathematics and Computer Science department of
Weizmann Institute
TITLE: How cryptosystems get broken - new side
channel attacks on the implementation of cryptography
WHEN: Wed 8/27/2008
WHERE: 99/1927 Research Lecture Room B
TIME: 1:30PM-3PM
HOST: Ramarathnam Venkatesan
******************************************************************************************************
ABSTRACT:
To evaluate an innovation in computer systems, performance analysts
measure execution time or other metrics using one or more standard
workloads. The performance analyst may carefully minimize the amount
of measurement instrumentation, control the environment in which
measurement takes place, and repeat each measurement multiple times.
Finally, the performance analyst may use statistical techniques to
characterize the data.

Unfortunately, even with such a responsible approach, the collected
data may be misleading due to measurement bias and observer effect.
Measurement bias occurs when the experimental setup inadvertently
favors a particular outcome.
Observer effect occurs if data collection alters the behavior of the
system being measured. This talk demonstrates that observer effect
and measurement bias are (i) large enough to mislead performance
analysts; and (ii) common enough that they cannot be ignored.

While these phenomenon are well known to the natural and social
sciences this talk will demonstrate that research in computer systems
typically does not take adequate measures to guard against measurement
bias and observer effect.



*****************************************************************************************************
WHO: Adi Shamir
AFFILIATION: Mathematics and Computer Science department of
Weizmann Institute
TITLE: New algebraic attacks on cryptosystems
represented by systems of low degree polynomial equations
WHEN: Fri 8/29/2008
WHERE: 99/1919 Research Lecture Room C
TIME: 1:30PM-3PM
HOST: Ramarathnam Venkatesan
******************************************************************************************************
ABSTRACT:
In this talk I will describe a new algebraic attack which is very
powerful and very general. It can solve large systems of low degree
polynomial equations with surprisingly low complexity. For example,
solving dense random-looking equations of degree 16 in several
thousand variables over GF(2) (which correspond to many types of LFSR-
based stream ciphers) can now be practically done in less than 2^{32}
complexity by the new technique.

BIO:
Adi Shamir has made diverse and influential contributions to
cryptography, making and breaking codes. He was a co-inventor of the
RSA public key system. He made fundamental cryptanalytic
contributions such as Lattice Reduction attacks and Differential
attacks. He is well known for theoretical contributions such as
IP=PSPACE. Recently he has studied hardware aspects, side channel
attacks and new paradigms such as a broadcast encryption, ring
signatures and T-functions.
Dr Shamir has been awarded numerous prizes including the 2002 ACM
Turing Award (along with Rivest and Adleman), Erdos Prize, the
Vatican’s PIUS XI Gold Medal and 2008 Israel Prize. He is a faculty at
the Mathematics and Computer Science department of Weizmann
Institute.