Cryptography Funding Award

Dr Eerke Boiten, head of the Security Research group and director of the University’s Cyber Security Research Centre, has been awarded £89,000 by EPSRC for the Network of Excellence “CryptoForma“, on the application of formal methods to cryptography.

The aim of the network is to use formal notations, and logic based techniques for modelling and analysing cryptographic primitives, and security protocols based on them. Their applications may be found in electronic voting, electronic commerce, cloud computing, etc. This will increase confidence in such important protocols and their applications.

The CryptoForma network was originally started in 2009 and was due to end in 2012; however, based on its success and its relevance within the current Cyber Security research agenda, it has been funded for another three years, until November 2015. The network organises meetings, involving typically some 40 academics and PhD students from sites across the UK, including Microsoft Research and Hewlett-Packard as industrial partners, and frequently also guests from elsewhere in Europe. It also organises workshops at international conferences, special issues of journals, and co-organises the 2012 edition of the FOSAD summer school.