Cyber Security and Cryptography Research Group
Description of Activities
The research group’s core work spans multiple areas of cybersecurity and cryptography, ranging from the theoretical foundations of cryptographic schemes to the analysis and practical implementation of security and privacy mechanisms. We have productive collaborations with both academic and industry partners, including leading universities and a prominent company in the financial sector. Additionally, we collaborate closely with other research groups, particularly the Quantum Computing and Communication Research Group. Our team has also contributed to several cybersecurity education and capacity-building initiatives, as well as the organization of cybersecurity challenges and conferences.
Research Interests
- Post-quantum Cryptography
- Secret Sharing
- Zero-Knowledge Proofs
- Cryptocurrencies
- Security and Privacy of Federated Learning
- Secure Protocol Design and Implementation
- Cyber Intelligence and Infrastructure Resilience
- AI supported Cybersecurity
- Security aspects of Fraud Prevention
- Security Analysis
Research Methodology
- Privacy-preserving algorithms, Anomaly/change detection
- AI security, Cybersecurity supported with AI
- Penetration testing, Cryptanalysis, Side-channel attacks
- Integrating standards into more complex protocols or software
- Security and privacy in software quality and testing
- Formal protocol verification tools
Research Staff
Lead researchers: Dr. Péter Burcsi (bupe@inf.elte.hu), Dr. Attila Kovács (attila@inf.elte.hu), Dr. Péter Kutas (kuppabt@ikelte.onmicrosoft.com), Dr. Imre Lendák (lendak@inf.elte.hu), Dr. Péter Ligeti (ligetipeter@inf.elte.hu), Dr. László Mérai (merai@inf.elte.hu); 10+ senior researchers, 10+ PhD students, 50+ MSc/BSc students.
Projects
The research group has been involved in 10+ National and 9 International educational and R&D projects, including COST actions, DIGITAL Europe Programme (European Digital Innovation Hub with Cybersecurity focus), EIT Digital Security, Privacy and Trust actions (Orchestration of financial services on demand, in cooperation with ATOS and GFT) and Erasmus+ capacity building projects (REWIRE: Cybersecurity Skills Alliance - A New Vision for Europe with 25 partners).
Some important publications in the field
- B. Bencina, P. Kutas, S-P.Merz, C. Petit, M. Stopar, C. Weitkämper: Improved algorithms for finding fixed-degree isogenies between supersingular elliptic curves, accepted at CRYPTO 2024. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-68388-6_8
- B. Borsos, A. Kovács, N. Tihanyi: Tight upper and lower bounds for the reciprocal sum of Proth primes, RAMANUJAN JOURNAL (2022). DOI: 10.1007/s11139-021-00536-2
- I. Lendák, B. Ingid, G. Palkó: WARChain: Consensus-based trust in web archives via proof-of-stake blockchain technology, JOURNAL OF COMPUTER SECURITY (2022). DOI: 10.3233/JCS-210040
- P. Ligeti, P. Sziklai, M. Takats: Generalized threshold secret sharing and finite geometry, DESIGNS CODES AND CRYPTOGRAPHY, (2021). DOI: 10.1007/s10623-021-00900-9
- L Mérai, I. Shparlinski: Distribution of recursive matrix pseudorandom number generator modulo prime powers, MATHEMATICS OF COMPUTATION (2024) DOI: 10.48550/arXiv.2302.03964
- Seres, I.A., Horváth, M. & Burcsi, P. The Legendre pseudorandom function as a multivariate quadratic cryptosystem: security and applications. AAECC (2023) DOI: 10.1007/s00200-023-00599-2