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An Obsession with Definitions

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Progress in Cryptology – LATINCRYPT 2017 (LATINCRYPT 2017)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNSC,volume 11368))

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Abstract

Many people seem to think that cryptography is all about creating and analyzing cryptographic schemes. This view ignores the centrality of definitions in shaping the character of the field. More than schemes or their analysis, it is definitions that most occupy my thoughts. In this paper, written to accompany an invited talk at Latincrypt 2017, I try to explain my own fascination with definitions. I outline a few of the definitions I’ve recently worked on—garbling schemes, online AE, and onion encryption—and provide some general advice and comments about the definitional enterprise.

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Acknowledgments

Thanks first to the coauthors of papers whose definitions I have summarized: Mihir Bellare, Viet Tung Hoang, Reza Reyhanitabar, Damian Vizár, and Yusi Zhang [4, 19, 25, 26]. Good definitions require good coauthors. Further thanks to Tung and Yusi for helpful proofreading.

Many thanks to the NSF for their support under grants CNS 1314885 and CNS 1717542. Of course all views expressed in this paper are entirely my own.

This paper was prepared to accompany an invited talk at Latincrypt 2017, which was held in Havana, Cuba. My kind thanks to all of those involved in organizing Latincrypt and inviting my participation, particularly Program Chairs Orr Dunkelman and Tanja Lange, General Chair Luis Ramiro Piñeiro Díaz, and Steering Committee member Francisco Rodríguez-Henríquez.

Latincrypt 2017 was my first time in Cuba, a place so close to the U.S. that a woman has managed to swim that gap [21]. Yet for decades the U.S. has maintained bizarre policies towards this neighbor, causing much suffering. I myself was born in 1962, during the brief interval between the Bay of Pigs Invasion and the Cuban Missile Crisis. One might have assumed that, 55 years later, relations would surely have normalized. It is very sad that this is still not the case.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, University of California, Davis, USA

    Phillip Rogaway

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  1. Phillip Rogaway
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Correspondence to Phillip Rogaway .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Technische Universiteit Eindhoven, Eindhoven, The Netherlands

    Tanja Lange

  2. University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel

    Orr Dunkelman

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Rogaway, P. (2019). An Obsession with Definitions. In: Lange, T., Dunkelman, O. (eds) Progress in Cryptology – LATINCRYPT 2017. LATINCRYPT 2017. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11368. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25283-0_1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25283-0_1

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