A large number of existing cryptographic applications rely on secret-key cryptography, which considers the setting where parties have a shared secret key. Existing secret-key primitives are potentially orders of magnitude faster than public-key ones.
Researchers at MIT have been advancing the state of the art in symmetric cryptography, investigating both new security models as well as more efficient solutions based on new theoretical tools for tasks ranging from simple message authentication and encryption to richer applications allowing search on encrypted data and efficient authentication with security based on hard learning problems.
ARTICLES IN REFEREED CONFERENCES OR JOURNALS
Bellare, M., Ristenpart, T., and Tessaro, S. "Multi-Instance Security and its Application to Password-Based Cryptography Advances in Cryptology." CRYPTO 2012.
Dodis, Y., Ristenpart, T., Steinberger, J., and Tessaro, S. "To Hash or Not to Hash Again? (In)differentiability Results for H² and HMAC Advances in Cryptology." CRYPTO 2012.
Gazi, P., and Tessaro, S., "Efficient and Optimally Secure Key-Length Extension for Block Ciphers via Randomized Cascading Advances in Cryptology." EUROCRYPT 2012.
