The rapid growth of the amount of connected devices and volumes of collected data are changing our world drastically. This results in an important challenge that is driven from two sides: First, the increased amount of data and devices and second, the increased security and privacy value of the data. In order to be able to protect this data sufficiently, we need suitable cryptographic functionalities. The most efficient cryptographic solutions are based on symmetric cryptographic primitives, e.g., block ciphers or cryptographic permutations and as such build the backbone of virtually any secure communication. The term „symmetric“ refers to the fact that the same secret key is used for both encryption and decryption.
The research in our workgroup focuses on the design and the security analysis of symmetric cryptographic primitives, spanning from the foundations of Boolean functions on the one end to lightweight cryptography on the other.