Today we witnessed an exciting moment for privacy, CS theory, and many friends and contributors of this blog. The definition of differential privacy, first articulated in a TCC paper just 10 short years ago, became a top-level feature of iOS, announced today at the Apple keynote address. Check this out for yourself: You may be intrigued as … Continue reading Differential Privacy in Your Pocket

Dozens of comments following Omer’s post, which confirmed the closure of the lab, would make you believe that it was a magical place where amazing things happened. And indeed, it was. But it was also more than just a place – the lab was a community with its own values, identity, voice and will. In … Continue reading Riding the Wheel of Samsara

My hearty congratulations to MacArthur Fellowship for handing down the right decision and naming Craig Gentry its fellow, better known as a genius. What a truly deserving winner! As the readers of this blog know full well, Craig has done seminal work in cryptography - time and time again. In his prize-winning Ph.D. work in … Continue reading Congratulations to MacArthur Fellowship

This week's post touches on subjects spanning almost 2000 years — we start with a cryptographic problem and go back in time to discover a theorem that could be known to the Greeks. Its content is based on a paper co-authored with Anton Mityagin and Kobbi Nissim that appeared in ANTS VII in 2006. The … Continue reading From Discrete Logarithm Problem to Menelaus Theorem

On the last day of the conference I paid a visit to the friendly workshop next door – CHES (Cryptographic Hardware and Embedded Systems). It was all foreign to me – a different mix of people, posters outside the lecture hall. After this year’s CRYPTO compressed talks, 25 minutes felt like an eternity. Actual food … Continue reading CRYPTO: Day 4

The highlights of the third day of CRYPTO were known ahead of time and yet did not disappoint: invited talk by Adam Langley on TLS, presentation of the best paper award, the business meeting followed by the beach barbecue. Adam Langley, known for his work in Google on TLS and HTTPS, addressed the joint session … Continue reading CRYPTO: Day 3

First, I’d like to thank my co-authors (Omkant Pandey and Ananth Raghunathan) for preparing and delivering two excellent talks this morning. It is due to their decision to step up to the plate that I get to do the fun stuff like blogging from the conference. The big topic of the afternoon session were multilinear … Continue reading CRYPTO: Day 2

First day of CRYPTO. Nothing happened… Just kidding. Actually, the first day was quite busy and eventful. It was headlined by the session on lattices and fully-homomorphic encryption. The one talk that I’d like to highlight was delivered by Craig Gentry (and co-authored by Amit Sahai and Brent Waters). It describes a particularly elegant and … Continue reading CRYPTO: Day 1

This week I’ll post a series of dispatches from the CRYPTO conference. Since this is the Day 0 of the conference, I’ll use it to lay some background for the uninitiated. This is the 33rd installment of the conference, which has gone from a small gathering of people excited about the newly emergent technology and … Continue reading CRYPTO 2013: Day 0

Before Communications of ACM became cool again, I’ve been a regular reader of the Notices of American Mathematical Society. I still check it out occasionally to keep tabs on the mathematical community. This month’s issue featured a lengthy article with a lofty title “Mathematical Methods in the Study of Historical Chronology”. It covers the work … Continue reading History Repeats Itself in the Notices of AMS