The speaker, Yael Tauman Kalai, a researcher at Microsoft and an adjunct professor at M.I.T., discusses the field of cryptography, its history, and its current challenges. Cryptography is a method of securing communication and computation, ensuring both confidentiality and integrity. It is used in everyday devices and online activities, often without users being aware.
The speaker emphasizes that modern cryptography is a science, as opposed to the classical cryptography of thousands of years ago, where algorithms were kept secret. Today, all cryptographic algorithms are public. The speaker also notes that the focus of modern cryptography has shifted from securing communication to securing computation, especially with the rise of smart devices and cloud computing.
Two main challenges arise when delegating computations to a cloud computer: ensuring privacy and verifying the integrity of the result. The speaker proposes a solution to the second challenge: using a computational heavy device to generate a computation and a succinct certificate that certifies the correctness of the output. This concept is the basis of interactive proofs and the Fiat-Shamir heuristic, which transforms interactive proofs into non-interactive ones, creating a succinct, non-interactive argument known as a SNARG (succinct non-interactive argument).
The speaker mentions that SNARGs are used in blockchain technology, where they certify the validity of transactions. She also discusses the potential threat of quantum computers to the security of cryptographic schemes, which are based on computational assumptions. However, she expresses optimism about the future of cryptography, suggesting that most schemes can be upgraded to be post-quantum secure.
1. Cryptography is a field that deals with securing communication and computation, aiming to ensure both confidentiality and integrity.
2. Cryptography is used all over the place, often without users even realizing it.
3. The speaker, Yael Tauman Kalai, is a researcher at Microsoft and an adjunct professor at M.I.T.
4. Her research focuses on theoretical cryptography.
5. Cryptography has been used for thousands of years, with schemes often developed and kept secret.
6. Modern cryptography differs from classical cryptography in that all algorithms are now public.
7. The transition from an art to a science in cryptography began when the emphasis shifted from securing communication to securing computation.
8. With the advent of smartphones and smartwatches, there are now many weak devices that interact with the real world and need to do computations.
9. To address privacy and integrity concerns, cryptography has evolved to give computational heavy devices a way to provide a succinct certificate that certifies the correctness of the output.
10. The concept of 'interactive proofs' has been developed in cryptography and computer science to prove things without revealing information beyond the validity of the statement.
11. The Fiat-Shamir heuristic or paradigm is used to convert interactive proofs into non-interactive ones, resulting in a succinct, non-interactive argument, also known as a SNARG (succinct non-interactive argument).
12. SNARGs are used a lot in the blockchain to certify the validity of transactions.
13. Ethereum, for example, uses SNARGs to certify the validity of transactions.
14. One of the biggest problems in cryptography today is the advent of quantum computers, which could potentially break the hardness assumptions upon which the security of cryptographic schemes is based.
15. Despite the potential threat, there is excitement about what quantum computers could bring, and efforts are being made to upgrade most cryptographic schemes to be post-quantum secure.