CybersecurityExpanding the scope and impact of cybersecurity and privacy research

As our lives and businesses become ever more intertwined with the Internet and networked technologies, it is crucial to continue to develop and improve cybersecurity measures to keep our data, devices and critical systems safe, secure, private and accessible.

The other day, the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace (SaTC) program announced two new center-scale “Frontier” awards to support large, multi-institution projects that address grand challenges in cybersecurity science and engineering with the potential for broad economic and scientific impact.

An NSF release reports that the Frontier awards are part a diverse $74.5 million portfolio of more than 225 new projects in 39 states. These cybersecurity research and education projects are aimed at minimizing the misuses of cyber-technology, bolstering education and training in cybersecurity, establishing the science of security, and transitioning promising cybersecurity research into practice.

“NSF’s investments are advancing knowledge to protect cyber-systems from malicious behavior, while preserving privacy and promoting usability,” said Farnam Jahanian, head of NSF’s Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE).

“The cybersecurity research and education efforts we support enable our nation to continue as a world leader in innovating secure technologies and solutions. These new Frontier awards will enable novel approaches to cybersecurity, with potential benefits to all sectors of our economy.”

Expanding the Frontiers of cybersecurity
The first of the Frontier awards helps establish the Center for Encrypted Functionalities (CEF). The goal of the center is to use new encryption methods to make a computer program — and not just its output—invisible to an outside observer, while preserving its functionality — a process known as program obfuscation. Such a technology enhances cybersecurity by hiding vulnerabilities from potential adversaries, thereby preventing tampering and deterring reverse engineering; and by allowing one to hide cryptographic keys within software, thereby strengthening encryption and information transfer.

“Humanity has been encrypting messages using mathematics for hundreds of years. But the question of encrypting a functionality seemed out of reach,” said Amit Sahai, a professor of computer science at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and the lead principal investigator of the project. “In human terms, this question is like asking whether it is possible for someone to keep a secret, if an adversary can see how every neuron in her brain behaves.”

Last year, some members of Sahai’s team discovered the first mathematically sound approach to encrypting functionalities. This breakthrough could reshape the way we think about security and computation.

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