Completed projects: Quantum computing and cryptography

Projects: Quantum Computing and Cryptography

2025 – 2026 - Use of Quantum Computing in Portfolio Optimization.

• Coordinator: Regina Melo Silveira
• Description: The objectives of this project are the development of research and innovation of emerging technologies in the area of computer engineering, more precisely, in Quantum Computing in order to acquire knowledge that can contribute to the development of the institution in this area and technological transfer through detailed documentation that guarantees such transmission of absorbed knowledge, with the possibility of reproducibility of experiments by the team of the requesting Institution.

2018 – 2020 - Efficient post-quantum cryptography for building advanced security services.

• Coordinator: Marcos Antonio Simplicio Junior
• Description: Post-quantum cryptosystems basically involve algorithms based on lattices, error correcting codes, multivariate quadratic systems (MQ), and schemes based on symmetric cryptography in general, as well as hash functions. The objective of this proposal is to specify, develop and analyze secure and hardware-friendly post-quantum cryptographic systems to provide not only basic security services (e.g., encryption, authentication and digital signatures), but also more advanced ones (e.g., blind signatures, homomorphic encryption and password hashing). Regarding basic services, the focus will be on improving the performance of such systems, possibly in terms of processing time and energy needs, but especially in terms of key sizes. signatures and cipher texts; One possible approach is to consider compact structures for the underlying keys, preserving their security and also allowing for optimized implementations that take advantage of these structures. Regarding security, there is interest in techniques to mitigate not only cryptanalytic attacks, but also implementation-related attacks, such as side-channel attacks. Research into advanced services should focus on expanding the range of applications that can be built with post-quantum systems, while current literature focuses mainly on basic services. In this case, the proposed approach is to adapt basic schemes to provide additional services, preserving (or improving) their security and efficiency, comparing the result with pre- and post-quantum alternatives (if they exist). The evaluation of the schemes will be both theoretical (computational complexity, parallelism, etc., in attacks and legitimate uses) and experimental (with software and hardware prototypes). Project certified by coordinator Marcos Antonio Simplicio Junior on 12/14/2016.

2012 – 2016 - Energy-efficient Security for SoC Devices -- Asymmetric Cryptography for Embedded Systems.

• Coordinator: Wilson Vicente Ruggiero
• Description: This project aims to design and develop asymmetric cryptographic primitives for use in SoC (System on a Chip) devices. The challenge in this scenario refers to the low availability of resources on these platforms, so that highly efficient solutions are needed in terms of RAM memory usage, code space, processing time and, something of special interest in this project, energy consumption. Project certified by coordinator Paulo Sérgio Licciardi Messeder Barreto on 11/14/2016.

2017 – 2018 - Development and Analysis of Post-quantum Cryptosystems and Their Applications.

• Coordinator: Marcos Antonio Simplicio Junior
• Description: Post-quantum cryptosystems are families of cryptographic algorithms which will remain secure even after the advent of large scale quantum computers. These algorithms are essential to ensure the feasibility and safety of future electronic transactions, since otherwise future transactions based on today's cryptosystems will be open to attacks by large scale quantum computers, and obviously, this situation will lead to a global economic catastrophe. In this project, we aim to address two important aspects of post-quantum cryptography, namely: 1) we will develop and analyze efficient and secure post-quantum cryptographic schemes for providing a variety of basic security services, including encryption, authentication, digital signatures and privacy-preserving signatures, suitable for both software and hardware implementation; 2) we will also develop applications which make use of the post-quantum cryptographic schemes. Our targeted application is the development of a post-quantum Trusted Platform Module (TPM), so it can be widely adoptable in practice as a replacement of the existing TPM. (Aucani Call nº 24/2017).

2016 – 2019 - Efficient Post-Quantum Cryptography for Building Security Applications.

• Coordinator: Marcos Antonio Simplicio Junior
• Description: Post-quantum cryptosystems basically involve the families of algorithms based on lattices, error correcting codes, multivariate quadratic systems (MQ), and schemes based on symmetric cryptography primitives in general, as well as on hash functions. This project proposal aims to specify, develop and analyze secure and hardware-friendly post-quantum cryptographic schemes for providing a variety of basic security services, including encryption, authentication and digital signatures. The focus will be on performance improvements, possibly in terms of processing time and energy requirements, but especially in terms of key, signatures and ciphertext sizes; one possible approach for tackling this issue is to consider compact structures for the underlying keys while preserving their security, which should also allow optimized implementations that take advantage of such structures. The security of these schemes should consider both cryptanalytic attacks and implementation-related threats, such as side-channel attacks. FAPESP-Intel Project 2015/50520-6.

2009 – 2011 - Design of a device for signing RSA transactions.

• Coordinator: Wilson Vicente Ruggiero
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