Full-Stack Privacy: Cryptography to People and Back Again

February 28, 2022
10:45-11:45 am ET
Cummings 601, Zoom
Speaker: Gabe Kaptchuk
Host: Dan Votipka

Abstract

My research is motivated by the need to build privacy preserving systems that serve the needs of real people. As such, I conduct research into privacy preserving systems in a `full-stack' manner and work across traditional security and privacy research areas, including core cryptography, applications of cryptography, and analysis of the social impact of cryptographic deployments. In this talk, I will illustrate my full-stack approach by giving an overview of three of my recent works, each of which is representative of a different part of the privacy stack. In the first part, I will discuss my recent work (Eurocrypt '21) that studies the feasibility of constructing encrypted communication systems that allow for law enforcement access while being robust against abuse. In the second part, I will discuss my work (ACM CCS'21) constructing cryptographic applications that allow sensitive communication to avoid censorship using realistic steganography. Third, I discuss my work (ACM CCS'21) studying how users understand differentially private systems when the encounter them in the wild. Finally, I conclude by discussing how working in these seemingly different research areas is actually highly complementary and necessary.

Bio:

Dr. Gabe Kaptchuk is a Research Assistant Professor in Boston University's Department of Computer Science and a Civic Technology Fellow in Boston University's Faculty of Computing and Data Science. He earned his PhD in Computer Science from Johns Hopkins University in 2020, under the supervision of his advisors Avi Rubin and Matt Green. He has broad research interests in security and cryptography, spanning theoretical cryptography to usable security, and is passionate about preparing cryptographic systems for deployment beyond the laboratory. Gabe has also worked in industry, at Intel Labs, and in the policy sphere, working in the United States Senate in the personal office of Sen. Ron Wyden.

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Meeting ID: 971 8312 0811

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Meeting ID: 971 8312 0811

Passcode: See colloquium email.