Guest Lecture

Joseph Bonneau

Applied Crypto Group, Stanford University

Joseph Bonneau is a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford University and a Technology Fellow at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. His research focuses on cryptography and security protocols, particularly how they interact with human and organizational behavior and economic incentives. Recently, he has focused on Bitcoin and related cryptocurrencies and secure messaging tools. He is also known for his work on passwords and web authentication. He received a Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge under the supervision of Ross Anderson and a bachelor's and master's degree from Stanford University under the supervision of Dan Boneh. Last year, he was as a Postdoctoral Fellow at The Center for Information Technology Policy, Princeton and he has previously worked at Google, Yahoo, and Cryptography Research Inc.

"Security By Consensus"

Abstract: Traditionally, cryptography aims to reduce security to computational assumptions: the system is secure as long as attackers can't guess a random key or solve a hard mathematical problem. Larger cryptographic systems require a more holistic approach as security often relies critically on user actions and economic incentives. I'll discuss my work on passwords, secure messaging tools and cryptocurrencies, and I'll highlight the exciting new era of building security protocols using data structures with global consensus.