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DFF grant to Diego De Freitas Aranha

Congratulations to associate professor Diego De Freitas Aranha who has been granted DKK 2.87 million from Independent research fund Denmark for the project Residue Number Systems for Cryptography (RENAIS).

The field of cryptography evolves in a non-linear way, where attacks against conventional techniques launch a new wave of ideas that make the next generation of systems more secure. Every new generation of cryptographic algorithms and implementations is more secure than the one it replaced.

Most of public-key cryptography relies on the performance of modular arithmetic involving large numbers to be efficient. However, conventional algorithms to perform these operations are serialized and cannot make full usage of resources available in modern processors. Alternatives for these algorithms are known and estimated to be more efficient in theory, but mysteriously fail to perform well in practice.

Diego Aranha wants to find out why and optimize these algorithms so they can deliver the expected performance without sacrificing security or correctness. The RENAIS project deals with the challenges of discovering new algorithms and implementation techniques to accelerate modular arithmetic of cryptographic interest, with a sharp focus on developing formal verification for correctness and implementation security guarantees. The aim is to improve performance of state-of-the-art cryptographic algorithms so even small devices can benefit from their security guarantees with a minimum of resources spend.

Every spring, the Independent Research Fund Denmark provides support for some of the most promising and original ideas across all scientific disciplines, when the programs "DFF-Forskningssprojekt1" and "DFF-Forskningsprojekt2" are awarded. This year, 191 projects received support for a total of DKK 668 million. The full list of supported projects is available here: https://dff.dk/aktuelt/pressemeddelelser/191-nye-forskningsprojekter-ser-dagens-lys-med-stotte-fra-danmarks-frie-forskningsfond