Jakob Pagter, University of Aarhus

Jakob Illeborg Pagter is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Computer Science at the University of Aarhus, from which he holds a PhD in computer science. His research areas include security in pervasive computing and applied cryptography.

In 2001, Jakob Illeborg Pagter finished his PhD within the area of theoretical computer science, specifically algorithms and computational complexity theory, at BRICS. After graduating, Dr Pagter worked as a Software Architect at Cryptomathic, a University of Aarhus spin-off, where he was involved in developing state-of-the-art security software.

Since 2003, Jakob Illeborg Pagter has been the overall project manager for the Alexandra Institute's Centre for IT-Security. Amongst other things he is responsible for initiating and participating in it-security projects aiming to bridge the gap between research and industry.

Track:   Tutorials

Abstract:

This tutotorial presents work which combines knowledge from three very different areas, namely theoretical cryptography, economics and the development of secure web-based applications on the .NET platform.

In the modern information society we often encounter scenarios where several parties need to interact electronically and do business. Such scenarios often involve sensitive data, which if withheld will imply a non-optimal result. Prime examples are auctions and benchmarking studied in economy. A central result says that one can never do better than if everybody reveal all their private information to an impartial social planner - a trusted 3rd party. Unfortunately, it is by no means obvious that one can find such a trusted 3rd party whom everybody will - or indeed should - trust. However, in recent years cryptographers have found some surprising ways to construct a truly impartial trusted 3rd party. The technique is called Secure Multiparty Computation and allows a number of parties to compute a function - say, the result of an auction - without revealing their input - the bids - which is to remain confidential. The crux of the matter is that the trust of the trusted 3rd party is no longer placed with any single entity. Instead the trust is split among the participating parties in a way so that the participants need only trust themselves!

In this tutorial we will cover:

• Economics: mechanism for constructing "optimal" auctions including a discussion of their computational implications as well as security aspects.
• Cryptography: Secure multiparty computation, or how to compute functions without looking at the input!
• Prototyping: How to realise a real-world auction scenario using secure multiparty computation on the .NET platform, including discussions on how to construct "old-fashioned" secure web-applications as well as how to implement robust and efficient cryptographic primitives.

Requirements: The tutorial is self-contained, so no prior knowledge of economics or cryptography is required. Basic knowledge of public-key cryptography will however make the presentation easier to digest.

The tutorial is based on the project Secure Computation, Economy, and Trust (www.sikkerhed.alexandra.dk/projekter/scet.htm - in Danish) supported by "Forskningsstyrelsens IT-program" (http://www.forsk.dk/forskpro/it_net_paed_1.htm - in Danish).