• The Future of Cryptographic Algorithms
  Bart Preneel,
  Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium
  

In this talk we discuss the state of the art and future of cryptographic algorithms. We revisit progress on block ciphers, stream ciphers, hash functions, MAC algorithms, public-key encryption and digital signatures. For each of these we will assess the maturity of the primitive and discuss challenges for future research. The main challenge is to create better trade-offs between performance, cost and security. More concretely, the following topics can be identified:

Extremely low cost solutions are essential to get cryptography everywhere, that is, for applications such as ambient intelligence, sensor networks and RFIDs). A specific target is encryption with less than 1500 gates or an entity authentication protocol that consumes less than 50~mJoules.

Extremely fast solutions for applications such as bus encryption, and authenticated encryption for Petabyte storage devices and Terabit networks.

Long term security solutions: for applications such as e-voting, e-health and national security we need cryptographic algorithms that provide guaranteed protection for 50 years or more. While this is conceivable for symmetric cryptography, this goal is currently a major challenge for public key cryptography, in view of progress in research to attack hard mathematical problems and the anticipated development of quantum computers.

Dr Bart Preneel is full professor at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium, where is he heading the COSIC research group. He was visiting professor at five universities in Europe. He has authored more than 300 reviewed scientific publications and is inventor of three patents. His main research interests are cryptography and information security. He has crypto-analyzed and designed several cryptographic algorithms and has been active on topics such as electronic identity cards, electronic voting and privacy. Bart Preneel is president of the IACR (International Association for Cryptologic Research). He is currently coordinating the ECRYPT II network of excellence in cryptology. He has served as program chair of a dozen international conferences and he has been invited speaker at more than 50 conferences. In 2003, he has received the European Information Security Award in the area of academic research. In his spare time he conducts the bigband of the K.U. Leuven and plays saxophone.