User authentication has become a vital part for numerous everyday tasks such as shopping, banking and communication. A common mechanism for digital authentication is the use of authentication tokens, credentials or certificates. Extra care needs to be taken, however, when authentication tokens are compromised, lost or held by an owner who goes rogue. In such cases, it is crucial that there exists an effective mechanism to securely and efficiently revoke such tokens. The goal of this project is to use advanced cryptographic primitives, such as cryptographic accumulators, for designing efficient revocation mechanisms for the Web Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) in an effort to transform the future of certificate revocation on the web and beyond.
Papamanthou will be collaborating on this research with the other PIs on the award from GMU (Foteini Baldimtsi), Brown (Anna Lysyanskaya), Northeastern (Alan Mislove) and Virginia Tech (Tijay Chung).