I 💜 Lattices
I may be a Professor, and where research is an important focus, but, at my core, a teacher — it is the most important part of an academic’s work, and it is the one that brings the most impact — teaching students how to learn complex topics. And, so, I just presented my first lecture on lattice cryptography, and while not quite getting there in fully explaining how it works, I have a starting foundation to build on — and can learn from how well I think I covered the topic. I always love adding new topics, and especially if they are so relevant to the future.
And, so, my Applied Cryptography and Trust class has been through the traditional public key encryption methods of ECC and RSA, and are now faced with the prospect of these being cracked. So, it’s a strange thing to get to the end of a module and then say that everything we have learned about one of the topics will be coming to an end in the future. But, it’s great, it’s exciting, and it allows us to understand something that will totally disrupt the operation of the Internet. The production of quantum computers may be five years off, or a decade, but it is on our horizon, and we need to make plans for it now. If we could migrate before they are even built, and not feel much change, it would be amazing and allow us to build secure systems which have security by design.
