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Colloquium Details

Secure Computation Using Garbled Circuits

Author:Payman Mohassel University of Calgary, Alberta, Canada
Date:March 19, 2014
Time:9:30am
Location:220 Deschutes

Abstract

The applications we use every day deal with privacy-sensitive data that come from different sources and entities, hence creating a tension between more functionality and privacy. Secure Multiparty Computation (MPC), a fundamental problem in cryptography and distributed computing, tries to resolve this tension by achieving the best of both worlds. But despite classic feasibility results, the practice of secure computation lags behind its theory by a wide margin. This talk will discuss my recent effort to make secure computation practical. I will focus on secure computation protocols based on "garbled circuits", the most influential building block in design and implementation of practical MPC. I will elaborate on my research to improve their efficiency, better their security, and offer tradeoffs between security and efficiency.

Biography

Payman Mohassel received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from University of California, Davis in 2009 (with Matthew Franklin). Since then he has held an assistant professor position at University of Calgary in Alberta, Canada where he is currently employed. His research is in cryptography and information security with a focus on bridging the gap between the theory and practice of privacy-preserving computation.