Google and BGU launch an ongoing academic research collaboration
The first project will explore security and trust in the post quantum internet
BGN Technologies, the tech transfer company of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, has signed a Master Sponsored Research Agreement with Google to explore mutual academic fields of research. The open-ended agreement is not limited to specific fields or timeframes.
"This collaboration brings together Google’s industry leading expertise and innovation with BGU’s academic excellence and research capabilities," says Ran Melamed, VP Business Development - Engineering and Exact Sciences at BGN Technologies.
In the future, safeguarding our identities and verifying them online will look very different than they do today. Shifting to blockchain technologies will demand users trust new technologies many are unfamiliar with.
The first project will focus on security and trust concerns in the post quantum internet. Quantum computers could potentially break the current mathematical promise of public key infrastructures, and therefore there is an urgent need to redesign the security infrastructure of the Internet. The potential for blockchain technology to replace current certificate authorities soon, and the capabilities of Large Language Models to act as identification oracles, have great potential for identifying and authenticating entities.
Prof. Shlomi Dolev, Rita Altura Chair, IEEE Fellow, EAI Fellow, Co-Founder Secret Double Octopus and SecretSkyDB, from the Department of Computer Science will collaborate with Google to think through these challenges and propose an integrated post quantum internet architecture.
“It is a great pleasure, as part of a collaboration framework between Google and BGU, to be working together with a team led by Prof. Shlomi Dolev on the project "Post Quantum Internet”, says Moti Yung, Distinguished Research Scientist, Google. “The project aims at addressing the needs and opportunities of the future Internet, and at assuring a safer and more secure Infrastructure. It will look for practical solutions that will mitigate potential increased threats and emerging new risk factors originating from advances in computing, algorithms, and architectures”.
Prof. Dolev will propose new cryptographic systems that will avoid the vulnerable single point of trust, the trust implied by a certificate authority. The proposed post quantum infrastructure is based on provable unbreakable cryptographic primitives combined with cryptographic hash functions that are widely used, and believed to be post quantum.