CERG Seminars are held in the Engineering Building on the GMU Fairfax campus unless noted otherwise. Parking is available in the Shenandoah parking deck near the Engineering Building. The seminar talks are usually 45 to 60 minutes long and are open to the public. If you wish to be notified about future seminars, please send an e-mail to Jens-Peter Kaps.
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2026
Hardware Acceleration for Post-Quantum Cryptography: Algorithmic Derivation and Architectural Innovation
Dr. Jiafeng (Harvest) Xie, Villanova University
Date: Monday, July 27, 1:30 pm - 2:30 pm
Post-quantum cryptography (PQC) has drawn significant attention from various communities recently, as the existing public-key cryptosystems, such as Rivest Shamir Adleman (RSA) and Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC), are proven to be vulnerable to large-scale quantum computers executing Shor's algorithm. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has already begun the PQC standardization process, and hardware acceleration for PQC algorithms is one of the most recent areas of focus. In this talk, I will follow this trend by introducing several interesting methods to accelerate PQC algorithms on the hardware platform. Specifically, this talk will present hardware implementation methods from both algorithmic derivation and architectural innovation perspectives. Implementation techniques for specific NIST-selected PQC schemes are also covered in this talk. I hope this talk will facilitate additional research to support PQC standardization and further development.
Hardware Implementation of a Stealthy and Lightweight Backdoor for CRYSTALS-Kyber in Hybrid Cryptosystems
Dr. Debapriya Basu Roy, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur
Date: Monday, July 27, 2:45 pm - 3:45 pm
The threat of practical quantum attacks has catapulted viable alternatives, like Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC), into prominence. The adoption and integration of standardized PQC primitives across the entire digital stack are promoted by various standardization bodies, governments, and major corporate houses. A serious challenge in quantum migration is ensuring that there is no hidden backdoor in the PQC implementations of a hybrid cryptosystem (supporting both pre-quantum and post-quantum algorithms), which are often procured from a third-party vendor. In this presentation, we investigate the possibility of a Kleptographic backdoor on the NIST-recommended key-encapsulation mechanism CRYSTALS-Kyber. The modified Kyber Key-Generation algorithm achieves an indistinguishable decryption failure probability that is indistinguishable from that of the original CRYSTALS-Kyber. The Kleptographic module is also implemented in an FPGA and embedded in the CRYSTALS-Kyber accelerator, with a very low area overhead (283 LUTs or 2% of total area). It can thus easily pass performance and functionality tests.