Information Security Laboratory

Information
Security
Laboratory

Introduction
Publications
Projects
People
News

School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

Department of Mathematics

Oregon State University

Monday, 23-Nov-2009 04:17:07 PST

Information Security Laboratory - Introduction

Introduction

Information Security Laboratory is an organization of faculty and graduate student research efforts concentrated on cryptography, information security, and electronic commerce at Oregon State University. It was founded by Professor Cetin K. Koc in September 1997.

The objectives of our laboratory are:

Coordination of the research efforts of the faculty and graduate students at Oregon State University in order to concentrate on key technologies, advanced scientific research, and better relations with Oregon and in general the US high-technology business.
Generation of funds from industrial, federal, and state sources to support the research and development activities of the faculty and the graduate students.
Education of the information technology engineers who will shape the future of personal communications, electronic commerce, and the Internet by designing and implementing next generation information security infrastructures.
Creation of high national and international visibility to Oregon State University as the center of research and development activities in shaping the future of information security technologies.

What is Information Security?

The information security technology provides the trusted gateways through which electronic commerce will flow in the future Internet.

Most technologies that shape tomorrow's society will be built around these gateways which will enable real-time purchase, distribution, and delivery of music, movies, and multimedia content to the homes, while securing the intellectual property rights and the royalty streams of authors, artists, producers, and publishers.

These gateways will allow mass customization of information to individual and corporate consumers by letting people turn their driver's licenses into digital wallets that carry anything from electronic cash to credit lines, airline tickets, or medical prescriptions. The creation of distributed universities, virtual communities, and millions of micro businesses around the world are not too far in the future.

The information security technology provides the necessary tools and methods for the construction of this infrastructure in such a way that the privacy, authenticity, ownership rights, and consumer rights of the participants are protected.

Tools and Techniques

Despite the large variety of the information security systems in existence today, nearly all are built using a small number of cryptographic functions invented during the last two decades. This core technology has been the main tool behind the development of digital signatures, digital certificates, authentication functions, and secure electronic mail. However, extensive research and development efforts are required for deployment of information security products and services in the consumer market.

The current information security techniques and tools are not flexible and fast enough to be useful for the next generation information technologies, e.g., mobile personal communications, electronic commerce, and the Internet.

The next generation information security technology needs to provide:

Compact, fast, low-power, and user-friendly architectures for deployment in consumer market, e.g., the development of smart credit cards, driver licenses, and ATM cards.
Scientifically and technologically more advanced solutions for better and longer-term security, e.g., algorithms and protocols based on modern elliptic curve cryptographic techniques are considered more secure than those based on the integer factorization for the same length of cryptographic keys.
Advanced protocols and information security infrastructures for better integration with other facets of society, e.g., local and federal government regulations, courts, and protection of consumer rights.

We study concepts,tools, and techniques in diverse fields such as computer architecture, theoretical computer science, communications, modern algebra, coding theory, and cryptography. We investigate a conglomeration of methods, tools, and techniques in order to design the next generation information security concepts, toolkits, and products.

Research Topics

We concentrate on the design and implementation of public-key cryptosystems, digital signatures, message digest functions, secret-key cryptographic algorithms, interactive computation protocols, and secure multiparty computations. Furthermore, we are also interested in optimization and performance evaluation of cryptographic functions.

The research and development projects are within the general framework of applications of cryptography in communication, computation, software distribution, and electronic commerce.

We identify the major components of these research and development efforts as

Public-Key and Secret-Key Cryptography
Elliptic Curve Cryptography
Hardware and Software Architectures for Cryptography
Cryptography and Security for Embedded Systems
Public-Key Infrastructures (PKIs)
Smart Card Architectures and Programming
Software Security
Security of Mobile Code and Digital Content

Introduction

What is Information Security?

Tools and Techniques

Research Topics

Sponsored Research