Invited Keynote Speakers

Reihaneh Safavi-Naini

Professor of Computer Science, NSERC/Telus Industrial Research Chair in Information Security

Title: Secure message transmission using multiple paths: theory and practice


Abstract: Secure message transmission is a fundamental problem in cryptography with formalized and proven secure solutions in information theoretic and computational settings. Dolev, Dwork, Waarts and Yung considered secure message transmission (SMT) problem in a network that is partially controlled by a computationally unbounded adversary, proposed an elegant abstract model for networks and showed that perfect (information theoretic) secrecy and reliability can be achieved without requiring a shared key as long as sufficient number of uncorrupted network paths exists between the two. In this talk we give an overview of SMT problem, consider a variation of the problem that is attractive in practice, and discuss our experience in attempting to securely implement the system in real-life networks, and lessons that we learnt.

Stephanie Carvin

Associate Professor of International Affairs
National Security, International Security, Critical Infrastructure Protection, Foreign Policy International Law

Alexandra (Sasha) Boldyreva

Professor of Computer Science and the Associate Chair for Graduate Studies in the School of Cybersecurity and Privacy at the Georgia Institute of Technology

Title: Searching for Searchable Encryption


Abstract: Cloud storage continues to experience explosive growth. Even if a cloud storage provider is trusted, it may be subject to security compromises. Unsurprisingly, data confidentiality is often a big concern or even a core compliance requirement. Simply using off-the-shelf encryption schemes does not work flawlessly for cloud storage applications because ciphertexts of standard encryption are not searchable. Hence in the last decade and a half, numerous research works have addressed the problem of designing protocols for secure search on encrypted outsourced data. However, the findings still do not seem to have caught up with growing practical demand. One of the main problems is to find suitable tradeoffs between performance, security, and functionality. This talk will discuss the evolution of the area of searchable encryption, covering the early schemes, some attacks, up through the state of the current research.

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