Congratulations to Prof. Francisco Rodriguez-Henriquez and Jorge Chavez-Saab, two members of the research team at our Cryptography Research Center (CRC), who, working in collaboration with Mehdi Tibouchi, distinguished researcher at NTT (Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation), recently won one of the Best Paper Awards for their scientific study titled “SwiftEC: Shallue-van de Woestijne Indifferentiable Function to Elliptic Curves”. The accolade comes just ahead of Asiacrypt 2022, the 28 th Annual International Conference on the Theory and Application of Cryptology and Information Security, which will be held from December 5-9, 2022, in Taipei, Taiwan.
The Asiacrypt conference is a leading international conference that covers all aspects of cryptography and information security. Sponsored by the International Association for Cryptologic Research (IACR) since 2000, the Conference is now held annually in different venues across the Asia-Pacific region.
The paper explored the need for hashing arbitrary values to points on an elliptic curve in many cryptographic constructions, with several techniques and methods proposed over the years. Eminent scientists Andrew Shallue and Christiaan van de Woestijne proposed one of the first techniques that could uniquely be applied to all elliptic curves over finite fields, but with its own set of limitations. Both CRC researchers along with Mehdi Tibouchi, attempted to revisit this issue and yield an improved variation of the Elligator Squared technique of Tibouchi that represents points of arbitrary elliptic curves as close-to-uniform random strings.
As a key enabler in designing, analyzing and implementing cryptographic algorithms and protocols, CRC offers transformative solutions that help address the threats today’s digital societies face. The Center is also committed to providing an accessible platform for the global cryptography community to discuss and share knowledge on various cutting-edge disciplines.
We are proud of the success and contributions of Prof. Rodriguez-Henriquez and Jorge Chavez-Saab to the cryptography domain! Here’s to many more industry accolades in the coming years!
For more information on Asiacrypt 2022, register now at https://asiacrypt.iacr.org/2022/registration.php
