My research focuses on the cryptology of a specific type of cryptosystems, the symmetric stream ciphers. These can encrypt large amounts of data efficiently in both hardware and software. A lot of research remains to be done on the security of this type of ciphers. I want to study the existing attacks on both stream ciphers and block ciphers (the study of block ciphers is much more developed, with ciphers such as DES and AES) and evaluate new classes of attacks (including algebraic attacks exploiting overdetermined sets of equations).
The aim of my research is to cooperate in a later stage to the design of a symmetric stream cipher that combines efficiency and security and can be used on a number of different platforms.
Supervisor:
Prof.Dr. Bart Preneel, KU Leuven.