Cryptography is the ancient science of encoding messages so that only the sender and receiver can understand them. Cryptography is now available to everyone thanks to the development of modern computers, which can perform more mathematical operations in a second than a human being could do in a lifetime. An ordinary PC can produce codes of such complexity that the most powerful supercomputer using the best available attack algorithms would not break them in a million years. Cryptography is used to secure telephone, Internet, and email communication and to protect software and other digital property. It may soon usher in a new age of money with electronic commerce.

The Cryptography group within Microsoft Research serves multiple roles:

• Researching new cryptographic methods and applications.
• Working with standards bodies to develop security protocols.
• Providing internal security consulting on Microsoft products.

People

Manager: Kristin Lauter, Principal Researcher

Long-Term Visitors

• Christian Rechberger, Ecole Normale Superieure
• Vanessa Teague, U. of Melbourne (07/18/11 - 08/05/11)
• Leo Reyzin, Boston U. (07/11/11 - 07/22/11)
• Kirsten Eisenträger, Penn State (06/20/11 - 07/15/11)
• Sean Hallgren, Penn State (06/20/11 - 07/15/11)
• Yevgeniy Dodis, NYU (June 2011)
• Thomas Ristenpart, U. of Wisconsin (June 2011)
• Andrey Bogdanov, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (3/21/11 - 5/13/11)
• Christian Rechberger, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Oct. 2010, Jan. 2011)
• Payman Mohassel, U. of Calgary (October 2010)
• Markulf Kohlweiss, MSR Cambridge (September 2010)
• Yevgeniy Dodis, NYU (August 2010)
• Chris Peikert, Georgia Tech (July 2010)
• Kevin Fu, U. of Massachussetts (July 2009, 2010)
• Giuseppe Ateniese, Johns Hopkins (June 2010)
• Mihir Bellare, UC San Diego (July 2008)

Short-Term Visitors (2011, 2010)

• Payman Mohassel, U. of Calgary (08/22/11 - 09/02/11)
• Marina Blanton, U. of Notre Dame (08/29/11 - 09/02/11)
• Adi Shamir, Weizmann (08/05/11 - 08/12/11)
• Bianca Viray, Brown (08/01/11 - 08/05/11)
• Orr Dunkelman, U. of Haifa (08/03/11 - 08/1211)
• Matt Green, Johns Hopkins U. (07/18/11 - 07/20/11)
• Sharon Goldberg, Boston U. (06/20/11 - 06/24/11)
• Daniel Wichs, NYU (05/30/11 - 06/03/11)
• Zvika Brakerski, Weizmann Institute (5/09/11 - 513/11)
• Manoj Prabhakaran, U. of Illinois - Urbana Champaign (4/29/11 - 4/03/11)
• Huija (Rachel) Lin, Cornell (04/25/11 - 04/29/11)
• Hoeteck Wee, Queens College (4/18/11 - 4/22/11)
• Jonathan Katz, U. of Maryland (3/22/11 - 3/24/11)
• Markulf Kohlweiss, MSR Cambridge (3/14/11 - 3/18/11)
• Yevgeniy Vahlis, Columbia (3/14/11 - 3/18/11)
• Vipul Goyal, MSR India (3/14/11 - 3/15/11)
• Allison Lewko, U. of Texas at Austin (3/7/11)
• Zvika Brakerski, Weizmann Institute (2/28/11 - 3/4/11)
• Gil Segev, Microsoft Research Sillicon Valley (12/13/10)
• Shweta Agrawal, U. of Texas at Austin (11/29/10 - 12/03/10)
• Mariana Raykova, Columbia (11/08/10 - 11/12/10)
• Adi Shamir, Weizmann (8/25/10 - 9/03/10)
• Orr Dunkelman, Weizmann (8/25/10 - 9/03/10)
• Juan Garay, AT&T (8/10/10 - 8/14/10)
• Vipul Goyal, MSR India (8/09/10 - 8/13/10)
• Hoeteck Wee, Queens College (8/04/10 - 8/12/10)
• Krzysztof Pietrzak, CWI (8/05/10 - 8/13/10)
• Jung Hee Cheon, Seoul National U. (6/28/10 - 7/02/10)
• Ron Rivest, MIT (3/10/10 - 2/24/10)
• Claudio Orlandi, Aaarhus (2/01/10 - 2/05/10)

Interns

Interns (with Kristin Lauter) 2001-2007

• Kirsten Eisentraeger, UC Berkeley
• Denis Charles, U Wisconsin
• Anton Mityagin, UCSD
• Dimitar Jetchev, UC Berkeley
• David Mandell Freeman, UC Berkeley
• Ning Shang, Purdue
• Kate Stange, Brown

News

• The Trash Attack
• Cryptanalysis of the Full AES!
• A Cloud that Can't Leak (MIT Tech. Review)
• Considerations for the Cryptographic Cloud (HPC in the Cloud)
• Security in the Cloud (Comm. of the ACM)
• Factorization of RSA-768!
• Security in the Ether (MIT Tech. Review)
• Video: searchable encryption (MIT Tech. Review)
• Searching an encrypted cloud (MIT Tech. Review)

Events

• Crypto Colloquium
• Workshop on Symmetric Cryptanalysis (August 8-10, 2011)
• Workshop on Elliptic Curves and Computation (October 18-22, 2010)
• Workshop on Cloud Cryptography (August 5 & 6, 2010)
• Workshop on Voting Technology (March 19, 2010)