Speaker: Silvia Sconza (University of Zurich)
Title: Knot Theory in Cryptography
Abstract: In this talk, we start providing a friendly introduction to Cryptography, focusing on the (Generalized) Diffie-Hellman Key Exchange. Building on this foundation, we present a novel cryptographic protocol that utilizes the semigroup of oriented knots under the connected sum operation. The shared secret key is derived from a knot invariant, computed from two distinct representations of the same knot. The security of this protocol relies on two computationally hard problems: the Decomposition Problem, which involves determining the prime decomposition of a knot, and the Recognition Problem, which asks whether two knot diagrams represent the same knot. This is a joint work with Arno Wildi.

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Meeting ID: 958 5298 7437
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