CAREER: Foundations of Unclonable Cryptography

Advancements in technology bring forth new cryptographic challenges for safeguarding the sensitive information of users. Classical computing has specific limitations in addressing certain cryptographic challenges. The emergence of quantum mechanics provides a unique opportunity to explore alternative approaches that can overcome these limitations and offer enhanced security guarantees, by exploiting the no-cloning principle of quantum mechanics. No-cloning means that it is impossible to create an exact copy of quantum information. This offers a promising avenue to tackle problems that are otherwise impossible to solve solely using classical computers. The overarching goal of this project is to develop the foundations of unclonable cryptography. The project is accompanied by a comprehensive education plan to engage undergraduate students in research through new course development, colloquia series, undergraduate crash courses, and accompanied by recruitment efforts that leverage the UCSB Early Scholars program and the California Cal-Bridge program. There are three main aims associated with the project. The first aim is to propose and study novel notions of encryption schemes and digital signatures equipped with robust guarantees for protecting secret keys. The approach exploits a witness encryption procedure using a quantum state. The second aim is to propose and study new cryptographic notions to protect against the unauthorized distribution of software, by leveraging properties of pseudorandom functions augmented by public verification. The third and final aim is to propose new frameworks, proof techniques, and black-box separations that will lead to a deeper understanding of the area of unclonable cryptography, and having conceptual parallels with indistinguishability obfuscation of classical cryptography. These directions are expected to place unclonable cryptography on more solid theoretical footing. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.