Real World Cryptographers Podcast

Originally invented as an art and science of secret writing, today, cryptography has evolved to much more than that. It is a deed of both makers and breakers and is used extensively by citizens, corporations, and in messaging applications, computer networks, and protocols. The real world cryptographers podcast captures the history of the field via stories.

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Real World Cryptographers Podcast

Yael Tauman Kalai

October 06, 2020 • Sergey • Season 1 • Episode 1

In this episode, we discuss how Yael started working in the field, choosing foundational research problems, privacy-preserving tools such as ring-signatures used in cryptocurrencies (Monero) and recent breakthroughs in schemes that allow hiding secrets in program code.

Did you know that ring-signatures came from the motivation to understand the Fiat-Shamir paradigms?

Who will get the credit for the recent breakthroughs in program obfuscation?

Did you know the history of the famous IP = PSPACE result?

Listen to the podcast to learn the answers.

Quotes from the show:
“I won’t be happy with myself if my work is buried and not applied anywhere”, “The world brings problems to you”.

Some referenced papers:
* R. Gay and R. Pass. Indistinguishability Obfuscation from Circular Security, https://eprint.iacr.org/2020/1010.

* A. Jain, H. Lin, and A. Sahai. Indistinguishability Obfuscation from Well-Founded Assumptions, https://eprint.iacr.org/2020/1003.

* C. Lund, L. Fortnow, H.J. Karloff, and N. Nisan. Algebraic Methods for Interactive Proof Systems.

* A. Shamir. IP = PSPACE.