Quantum computers pose a grave threat to the cryptography we use today. Sure, they might not be built for another decade, but today’s secrets are nonetheless at risk: indeed, many adversaries have the capabilities to record encrypted traffic today and decrypt it later. In this talk, I give an overview of post-quantum cryptography (PQC), quantum-safe alternatives developed to alleviate this problem. I talk about the NIST PQC competition that will lead to new standards to replace RSA and ECC, I present our prototype integrations into real-life protocols and applications (such as TLS, SSH, and VPN), and our experiments on a variety of devices (from IoT, to cloud, to HSM). I discuss the Open Quantum Safe project for PQC development, and related open-source forks of OpenSSL, OpenSSH, and OpenVPN that can be used to experiment with PQC today. I'll present a demo of a post-quantum TLS 1.3 connection. Finally, I explain the practicality of PQC, and how to start experimenting with it to defend your applications and services against the looming quantum threat.
Christian Paquin Principal Program Manager, Microsoft Research
I am a crypto/security specialist in MSR’s Security and Cryptography team. I’m currently involved in projects related to post-quantum cryptography, such as the Open Quantum Safe project. I’m also leading the development of the U-Prove technology. I’m mostly interested in identity and access management, privacy-enhancing technologies, smart cloud encryption (e.g., searchable and homomorphic encryption), and the intersection of AI and security.
Prior to joining Microsoft in 2008, I was the Chief Security Engineer at Credentica, a crypto developer at Silanis Technology working on digital signature systems, and a security engineer at Zero-Knowledge Systems working on TOR-like systems.