Crypto 2019 Best Young Researcher Award

C&O graduate students Samuel Jaques and John Schanck have won the Best Young Researcher Paper Award at Crypto 2019, the 39th Annual International Cryptology Symposium. Their paper, Quantum cryptanalysis in the RAM model: Claw-finding attacks on SIKE, will be presented on August 20 in Santa Barbara.

Paper abstract: "We introduce models of computation that enable direct comparisons between classical and quantum algorithms. Incorporating previous work on quantum computation and error correction, we justify the use of the gate-count and depth-times-width cost metrics for quantum circuits. We demonstrate the relevance of these models to cryptanalysis by revisiting, and increasing, the security estimates for the Supersingular Isogeny Diffie-Hellman (SIDH) and Supersingular Isogeny Key Encapsulation (SIKE) schemes. Our models, analyses, and physical justifications have applications to a number of memory intensive quantum algorithms."