I will give some insight to the world of (post-quantum) cryptography and what questions in this world look like, from the perspective of a newcomer. In particular, I will give a user-friendly introduction to the Random Oracle Model, a tool frequently used in cryptography proofs. We will look at where the model fails and what problems come up when giving you enemies a quantum computer.
No prior knowledge in quantum or cryptography is required to follow this talk, anyone who has programmed before will be able to follow.
Last October, I started my PhD with the topic 'Quantum Security of Memory-Hard Functions' at the University of Amsterdam. Since then, I have been working on building an understanding of the tools typically used to prove security of cryptographic constructions. In this talk, I want to give you an introduction to the Random Oracle Model, a typical building block and its application to my topic.
We will start from basic assumptions and work our way up to the full model and the construction of memory-hard functions. On the way, we will explore where the model breaks and what challenges arise once we assume our attacker has access to a quantum computer.