Background: “The Emmy Noether Programme supports young researchers in achieving independence at an early stage of their scientific careers. Young postdocs gain the qualifications required for a university teaching career during a DFG-funded period, usually lasting five years, in which they lead their own independent junior research group.” (DFG)

Content: The goal of the research project “Minimizing Cryptographic Assumptions” (MiniCrypt) is to determine the mildest assumptions required for the provably secure construction of selected cryptographic protocols. Complex protocols are typically built from simpler primitives such as the RSA function or general one-way functions. Determining the weakest yet sufficient primitives for a protocol is an important task from a security viewpoint. Especially with the emerging area of quantum computers, which would render some of today's most popular problems like RSA insecure, and the recent alarming attacks on well-known cryptographic hash functions, the search for alternative constructions based on more general primitives and weaker assumptions becomes increasingly important.

Funded Members: Marc Fischlin, Anja Lehmann, Dominique Schröder