Section: Bilateral Contracts and Grants with Industry

Bilateral Grants with Industry

Until the mid 2000’s, multivariate cryptography was developing very rapidly, producing many interesting and versatile public-key schemes. However, many of them were soon successfully cryptanalysed (a lot have been done in this group). As a consequence, the confidence in multivariate cryptography cryptosystems declined. It seems that there have emerged new important reasons for renewal of the interest in a new generation of multivariate schemes. In the past two years, the algorithms for solving the Discrete Logarithm Problem over small characteristic fields underwent an extraordinary development. This clearly illustrates the risk to not consider alternatives to classical assumptions based on number theory. In parallel, two of the most important standardization bodies in the world, NIST and ETSI have recently started initiatives for developing cryptographic standards not based on number theory, with a particular focus on primitives resistant to quantum algorithms. An objective here is then to focus on the design of multivariate schemes.

The team is now involved in the industrial transfer of post-quantum cryptography. The project is supervised by SATT-LUTECH. SATT-LUTECH specializes in the processing and transfer of technologies from research laboratories of its shareholders: Inria, CNRS, University of Technology of Compiègne, National Museum of Natural History, Institute Curie, Université Panthéon-Assas, Paris Sorbonne University and National School of Industrial Creation).

The team has recently developed, in partnership with a mobile application development company (WASSA), an Android app for smartphones (Samsung G5 type) that uses multivariate cryptography. The application has been tested mid-November in a series of experiments supervised by DGA and French Ministry of Defense. The experiment gathered a total of hundred participants from various operational units. This is a first milestone in the maturation project whose goal is to create a start-up.