On Information Theoretic and Distortion-based Security

Speaker: Gaurav Kumar Agarwal
Affiliation: UCLA Ph.D. Candidate

Abstract: With the explosion in the growth of the data produced and communicated, sensitive information has to be securely exchanged.  Today, the ever-increasing computational power of adversaries is challenging the state-of-the-art cryptographic encryption mechanisms, as these mechanisms assume adversaries with limited computational power.  Thus, with the advent of the quantum computing era, we require new mechanisms to guarantee a secure exchange of information.

In this talk, I will talk about three different scenarios where we exploit specific opportunities present in each, to develop lightweight encryption schemes that do not require sharing large keys in advance and are secure against eavesdroppers with unlimited computational capabilities. In the first scenario, we exploit the fact that the eavesdropper, although computationally powerful, may not be present everywhere in a network. In the second scenario, we exploit the fact that in mmWave networks, we use narrow beamforming and have the freedom to point the beams to any neighbor within a certain radius. In the third scenario, we exploit the fact that in cyber-physical systems, data is embedded in a metric space, and unlike categorical data, not all bits need to be equally protected.

Biography: Gaurav Kumar Agarwal is a Ph.D. candidate in the laboratory of Algorithmic Research for Networked Information flow (ARNI) with Prof. Christina Fragouli. His research interests are information theory, cyber-physical systems, and learning theory. Before joining ARNI lab in 2015, he got his undergrad degree in Electronics and Communication Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee in 2012, and master’s degree in Electrical and Communication Engineering from Indian Institute of Science Bangalore in 2015. He interned with Defense Academy of United Kingdom in 2011 and with Technicolor Research, Los Altos in 2016.

For more information, contact Prof. Christina Fragouli (christina.fragouli@ucla.edu)

Date/Time:
Date(s) - Jun 10, 2019
9:00 am - 11:00 am

Location:
E-IV Tesla Room #53-125
420 Westwood Plaza - 5th Flr., Los Angeles CA 90095