Public Key Cryptography and Applications
Information Technology Laboratory, Computer Security Division
NIST only participates in the February and August reviews.
Thirty-seven years after its invention, public key cryptography has been well deployed to protect various network and applications. The research opportunity represents two urgent needs in cryptographic applications. The first need is to investigate cryptographic schemes which are designed to resist future quantum computing capable cryptanalysis. These schemes are categorized as post-quantum cryptography (a.k.a. quantum-safe cryptography) schemes. The second need, as more and more transactions are conducted through the Internet with digitalized media, is to develop cryptographic schemes with privacy enhancements. The research opportunity includes but is not limited to the following research areas: (1) research on quantum computing resistant cryptography schemes such as lattice-based, coding-based, multivariate, and isogeny-based schemes; (2) analysis of the practical impact when deploying these schemes to existing network and application security protocols; and (3) develop and analyze protocols with privacy protection features for applications in e-government, cloud computing, data sharing, e-commerce, and trusted platform attestation.