University of California San Diego cryptographer Nadia Heninger recently received the prestigious Test of Time award from the International Association for Cryptologic Research (IACR) for her influential paper "Reconstructing RSA Private Keys from Random Key Bits."
Heninger, an associate professor in the university’s Department of Computer Science and Engineering in the Jacobs School of Engineering, co-authored the 2009 paper with Hovav Shacham, a former UC San Diego computer science professor who is currently a professor at the University of Texas at Austin.
The paper was recognized “for introducing the go-to tool for side channel attacks on CRT-RSA that played a pivotal role in helping secure the Internet,” according to the IACR citation. The paper has been instrumental in developing techniques to protect against side-channel attacks, which are critical for the security of RSA encryption and, by extension, the overall security of the Internet, a University of Texas Austin announcement says.
The IACR Test of Time Award is a prestigious honor given annually at each of the three IACR general conferences: Asiacrypt, Crypto, and Eurocrypt. The award recognizes the paper that has had a lasting impact on the field of cryptography and was published 15 years prior.
Heninger’s primary research interests are in cryptography and security, with particular interest in mathematical cryptanalysis aimed at real-world applications. She has previously received a Test of Time award from USENIX Security as well as an NSF CAREER award and best paper awards from Crypto, PKC, CCS, and USENIX Security.