SEED 2024

May 16-17, 2024

 Orlando, Florida

Jakub Szefer, Yale University

Title: Computer Security in Quantum Computing Era

Abstract

As we enter the Quantum Computing ear, we need to prepare for new types of security threats and develop protections for all types of computing systems. In this talk, I will cover two distinct, yet intertwined research directions necessary for building foundation for secure, next-generation computing systems. With advent of quantum computing, the world prepares to transition to post-quantum cryptography to protect from future threats due to quantum computers breaking existing cryptographic algorithms. Driven by ongoing NIST standardizations efforts and an industry push, there is a need to develop efficient and secure accelerator architectures for different and novel types of cryptographic algorithms being proposed and standardized. As with any cryptographic algorithm implementations, there is need to understand side-channels, fault-injection threats, and hardware trojan vulnerabilities. In the second part of the talk, I will focus on emerging field of quantum computer security. There is today an explosion of research and commercial deployment of cloud-based quantum computing systems – yet security of these systems has not been systematically analyzed. As with any computing systems, there is need to understand how to protect Quantum Computer users from other, untrusted, co-located uses in shared datacenter, but also how to protect Quantum Computer users from untrusted cloud providers and there is thus a particular need to develop zero trust quantum computing architectures that I will discuss. As we enter the Quantum Computing ear, both protection of classical computers (with post-quantum cryptography) and protection of quantum computers (with novel security architectures) become necessary and urgent research directions.

Bio

Prof. Jakub Szefer’s research focuses on computer architecture and hardware security: it encompasses security of processor architectures, cloud computing architectures, reconfigurable logic, post-quantum cryptographic accelerators, and most recently, quantum computers. In addition to numerous top research papers on these topics, Jakub is the author of “Principles of Secure Processor Architecture Design”, published in 2018, the first book in the field to focus on processor architecture security. He is also a co-editor of a book on “Security of FPGA-Accelerated Cloud Computing Environments”, published in 2023. Among others, he has received academic recognition through the NSF CAREER award, industry recognition through being finalist in the Bell Labs Prize, and mentoring and teaching recognition through Yale’s Ackerman Award.