[Pearg] Fwd: [Busec] Virtual BUsec seminar Wed 9/30 at 9:45 am: Sarah Scheffler, "Protecting Cryptography from Self-Incrimination"

This work might be of interest to the PEARG community.

DaveO

Forwarded message:

> From: Sarah Scheffler <sscheff@bu.edu>
> To: busec <busec@cs.bu.edu>
> Subject: [Busec] Virtual BUsec seminar Wed 9/30 at 9:45 am: Sarah 
> Scheffler, "Protecting Cryptography from Self-Incrimination"
> Date: Fri, 25 Sep 2020 10:26:53 -0600
>
> *Date/time: *Wed 9/30 at 9:45am ET
> *Zoom link: *
> https://bostonu.zoom.us/j/222968851?pwd=RTBhSnVnbDhqbnFrMWRSeVU1alYyUT09
> *Meeting ID: *222 968 851
> *Password: *115101
>
> -
>
> *Speaker: *Sarah Scheffler
> *Title: *"Protecting Cryptography from Self-Incrimination"
> *Abstract: *
> The information security community has devoted substantial effort to 
> the
> design, development, and universal deployment of strong encryption 
> schemes
> that withstand search and seizure by computationally-powerful 
> nation-state
> adversaries. In response, governments are increasingly turning to a
> different tactic: issuing subpoenas that compel people to decrypt 
> devices
> themselves, under the penalty of contempt of court if they do not 
> comply.
> Compelled decryption subpoenas sidestep questions around government 
> search
> powers that have dominated the Crypto Wars and instead touch upon a
> different (and still unsettled) area of the law: how encryption 
> relates to
> a person's right to silence and against self-incrimination.
>
> In this work, we provide a rigorous, composable definition of a 
> critical
> piece of the law that determines whether cryptosystems are vulnerable 
> to
> government compelled disclosure in the United States. We justify our
> definition by showing that it is consistent with prior court cases. We
> prove that decryption is often not compellable by the government under 
> our
> definition. Conversely, we show that many techniques that bolster 
> security
> overall can leave one more vulnerable to compelled disclosure.
>
> As a result, we initiate the study of protecting cryptographic 
> protocols
> against the threat of future compelled disclosure. We find that secure
> multi-party computation is particularly vulnerable to this threat, and 
> we
> design and implement new schemes that are provably resilient in the 
> face of
> government compelled disclosure. We believe this work should influence 
> the
> design of future cryptographic primitives and contribute toward the 
> legal
> debates over the constitutionality of compelled decryption.
>
> *Bio:*
> Sarah is a fifth-year PhD student in the crypto/security group at 
> Boston
> University, advised by Prof. Mayank Varia. Her research examines 
> topics in
> the intersection of law and cryptography, as well as zero-knowledge 
> and
> secure messaging.

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