Efficient Threshold ECDSA and Their Applications
- Prof. Man Ho Au, Hong Kong Polytechnic University
- Time: 2023-09-23 19:00
- Host: Prof. Xiaotie Deng
- Venue: Room 204, Courtyard No.5, Jingyuan
Abstract
Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA) is one of the most popular digital signature scheme deployed in practice. They are widely used in ensuring the authenticity and integrity of messages in various applications. In this talk, we go into the details of distributed ECDSA, exploring its significance, mechanisms, and applications.
The speaker will begin by giving an overview of traditional ECDSA and its role in establishing digital signatures. With growing popularity of the use of ECDSA in blockchains, there is an increasing need to secure the signing key. This talk will delve into the challenges posed by distributed environments, and how Distributed ECDSA rises to address these challenges.
We will formalise the concept of threshold signatures and how they enable multiple parties to collaboratively create a signature without compromising security. Then, we will discuss common approaches to design threshold ECDSA. Finally, we will also discuss how these techniques can be used to support other threshold signatures.
Biography
Prof. Man Ho Au is a Full Professor at the Department of Computing of The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Before that, he was an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Hong Kong. His research interests include information security, cryptography, blockchain technology, and their applications. He has published over 200 refereed papers in top journals and conferences, including CRYPTO, ASIACRYPT, ACM CCS, NDSS, IEEE S&P, SIGMOD, SOSP, IEEE TIFS, IEEE TDSC, and others. He is a recipient of the 2009 PET runner-up award for outstanding research in privacy-enhancing technologies. His team won the ZPrize - Open Division Plonk-DIZK GPU Acceleration prize, which came with a cash award of 550K USD. He has served as a program committee/general chair of several international conferences, including ACM ASIACCS, RAID, SECURECOM, ISPEC, PROVSEC, among others. Currently, he is an associate editor of IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing, Journal of Information Security and Applications, and an editorial board member of the Journal of Cryptologic Research.