New Tools in Cryptography

Over the past three years we have seen a number of exciting new cryptographic constructions based on certain bilinear maps. In this talk we will survey some of these new constructions and their applications. For example, bilinear maps give rise to a new digital signature scheme with remarkable properties: it enables aggregation of many signatures which can be used to reduce communication in secure routing protocols and shrink certificate chains. Bilinear maps have also been used to construct the first practical public key encryption scheme where public keys can be arbitrary strings. In this talk we will survey some of the cryptographic applications of bilinear maps and describe several open problems in this area. The talk will be self contained.