May 25th at 18:00, in F.15 ILLC Seminar Room
Quantum computers promise to overturn the world of public-key cryptography. Will your bitcoins be safe from evil physicists, ten years from now? What makes a quantum computer so powerful? Is punk really both dead and alive?
In this talk, I will briefly discuss what a quantum computer is, and why it poses a threat to present-day cryptography. I will focus on digital signature schemes, discuss some clever ways of identifying yourself and explain what a zero-knowledge proof of knowledge is (no paradoxes intended). Lastly, I will talk about my own attempts at proving post-quantum security of a certain class of signature schemes. In a post-truth post-quantum world, can authenticated humanity still be saved?