Geometry Seminar

 

University of Tor Vergata, Department of Mathematics

13th of May 2025, 14:30-16:00,room D’Antoni

 

 

 

 

 

 

Algebraic pathfinding between superspecial principally polarized abelian surfaces

 

Wouter Castryck


KU Leuven

 

 

 

Charles, Goren and Lauter in 2006 proposed a cryptographic hash function based on walks in the ℓ-isogeny graph of supersingular elliptic curves in large characteristic p. In 2020 Eisenträger et al. showed that such hash functions allow for an efficient computation of second pre-images (and hence are dramatically broken) as soon as the endomorphism ring of the starting vertex is known. In this attack, the main auxiliary tool is the so-called "KLPT algorithm" for finding a connecting ideal between two maximal orders in a positive definite quaternion algebra. Since all known methods for constructing supersingular elliptic curves implicitly leak the endomorphism ring, secure instantiations of the CGL hash function should be set up by a trusted party, or through multi-party computation. In this talk I will present a similar result for hash functions from (ℓ, ℓ)-isogenies between superspecial principally polarized abelian surfaces in characteristic p: if the principal polarization on the starting surface is sufficiently well-understood, then collisions can be produced in polynomial time, and therefore the hash function should be considered broken (but in a weaker sense than in the case of elliptic curves). The main auxiliary tool is a generalization to dimension 2 of the KLPT algorithm. It is likely that all known methods for generating a starting surface implicitly reveal the information needed for producing collisions, so it seems that, here again, a trusted set-up is needed. This is joint work with Thomas Decru, Péter Kutas, Abel Laval, Christophe Petit and Yan Bo Ti.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This talk is part of the activity of the MIUR Excellence Department Projects MathMod@TOV, and the PRIN 2022 Moduli Spaces and Birational Geometry and Prin PNRR 2022 Mathematical Primitives for Post Quantum Digital Signatures