Janno Siim

The EU Parliament has published a new proposal for Chat Control to mass-surveil all digital communication in Europe. The proposal is ineffective, weakens secure communication, and violates basic human privacy. This must be stopped immediately. #ChatControl
csa-scientist-open-letter.org/Sep2025

Really happy to have Jens Groth visiting us in Tartu and giving a seminar on ZK, zkVMs, and AI on Tuesday

This is some mind-blowing stuff :o

No idea. Looking at the source, it should've been easy to figure out that these are intentional

It took me a moment to understand what is the issue :D

Springer just sent an "Urgent" email that many authors from Crypto 2025 (all from ZK community) have broken references provided as "?" in their camera-ready version:

There are a few other results in the paper. Such as how to consider imperfect oracles etc.

Our original intention was to show that Uber assumption reduces to n-PDL (just like in the algebraic group model, but now in the standard model.) However, this we show to be impossible with any generic reduction (such as den Boer-Maurer reduction).

Our paper with Roberto Parisella and Maiara Bollauf was accepted to CiC. We extend DL <=> CDH reduction by den Boer and Maurer.

In particular, we show that in BLS12-381 n-PDL (Power DL) is equivalent to n-Diffie-Hellman exponent assumption.

Trump scraps Biden software security, AI, post-quantum encryption efforts in new executive order The White House accused the Biden administration of trying to “sneak problematic and distracting issues into cybersecurity policy.”

"Trump scraps Biden software security, AI, post-quantum encryption efforts in new executive order" by @ericjgeller.com www.cybersecuritydive.com/news/trump-c... (updated EO 14144 text using Gemini 2.5 Pro here: docs.google.com/document/d/1... )

"By the national bibliometry rules, conference papers are not counted in the most important reporting processes. Thus, we are strongly incentivised with money to publish research in venues where the impact is lower."

That was surprising to read. I hope it will change.

New accepted paper at Crypto 2025:
"On Knowledge-Soundness of Plonk in ROM from Falsifiable Assumptions" (Helger Lipmaa, Roberto Parisella, Janno Siim), with ex-students Roberto and @jannosiim.bsky.social (Janno is also now a colleague)

It’s now easier to prove age and identity with Google Wallet Learn more about new Google Wallet updates, including new ways to use your digital ID for age and identity verification.

In other news, Google is deploying age/ID verification based on ZK proofs. blog.google/products/goo...

Thank you 🙂

Europe’s GDPR privacy law is headed for red tape bonfire within ‘weeks’ Long seen as untouchable in Brussels, the GDPR is next on the list of the EU’s crusade against overregulation.

Europe's most famous technology law, the GDPR, is next on the hit list as the EU pushes ahead with its regulatory killing spree to slash laws it reckons are weighing down its businesses.

Join us in Tartu to work on SNARKs and ZK proofs. 👇

We intend to build a strong ZK research group here + I think it's a really cool place to live and work: virtualtour.ut.ee/en/84-univer...

A screenshot of the Wikipedia page for Alice and Bob, but with all occurrences of "Alice and Bob" replaced with "Hegseth and Waltz".

Just doing some reading about the design of cryptographic protocols.

Our group in Tartu (me and
@jannosiim.bsky.social
and some PhD students) have additional openings for a postdoc and a PhD student; see crypto.cs.ut.ee/Main/OpenPos... (iacr.org/jobs link will hopefully be up in a few days). Apply by email to me

In Sofia

List of ProTeCS accepted talks - Part 1: - Lazy “Twenty Questions” as a Proof Principle — How a pen-and-paper one-liner becomes an EasyCrypt library (François Dupressoir, University of Bristol) - Is it better or worse (UC-wise) (Saskia Bayreuther, KASTEL Security Research Labs, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology) - Special Soundness of Non-Interactive Polynomial Commitment Schemes (Janno Siim, University of Tartu) - Towards formally verifying the security reductions of the TLS 1.3 key schedule in SSBee (Amirhosein Rajabi, Aalto University) - What can the Algebraic Group Model tell us about proof techniques in the Generic Group Model? (Jake Januzelli, Oregon State University)

List of ProTeCS accepted talks - Part 2: - Privacy Proofs for Anonymous Communication Networks (Christoph Coijanovic, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT)) - Expected (polynomial) time in cryptography (Michael Klooß, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology) - Commit-and-Prove System for Vectors and Applications to Threshold Signing (Cavit Özbay, Hasso Plattner Institute, University of Potsdam) - The Power of Halting in Security Games (Igors Stepanovs) - The Humble Power of the T-tranformation (Hans Heum, Norwegian University of Science and Technology)

The list of accepted talks for ProTeCS 2025 is now online.
We are looking forward to exciting talks about cryptographic proofs and proof techniques. Thanks to everyone who submitted a proposal!

protecs-workshop.gitlab.io/accepted

Excited to read this :)

We have extended the submission deadline for the International Workshop on Foundations and Applications of Privacy-Enhancing Cryptography (PrivCrypt) by two weeks to April 4, 2025, AoE. Please help spread the word and consider submitting your work to join us in Munich in Summer 😎

www.sesame.com/research/cro...

I forgot after one minute that I'm not talking to a human. I guess the movie "Her" is the reality now

Wednesday, May 7, 14:30-16:00 (Room TBD): Cryptography in a Changing World: Navigating Geopolitical Uncertainty and Security Risks Join us to discuss what we as a community can and should do in light of a dramatically changing political landscape, both domestically for some of us and internationally for all of us. We don't have ideas to pitch to you, but we think it will be useful to meet and to start a discussion. For more information: Martin Albrecht and Kenny Paterson.

Together with @kennyog.bsky.social we're organising a meeting at Eurocrypt to discuss how the, let's say, "dramatically changing political landscape" affects cryptography and our community, both domestically in some countries but also internationally eurocrypt.iacr.org/2025/communi...

I hope Google Chrome will use less memory now

16th International Conference on Cryptology, Africacrypt 2025 - Sciencesconf.org Africacrypt 2025 is organized by the ENSIAS College of Mohammed V University in Rabat with partnership of the General Directorate of Information Systems Security (DGSSI), Morocco.

16th International Conference on Cryptology AFRICACRYPT 2025
July 21-23, 2025 – Rabat, Morocco 🇲🇦

Extended submission deadline in 1 week:
africacrypt2025.sciencesconf.org
Submit your best results !

See you in Rabat 🇲🇦 in July 2025.

Because of new tariffs, submissions to crypto with a non US author have a 20% reduction to their page limit.

Today, I started as a crypto lecturer at the University of Tartu. A new life begins🙂

Really cool result following some of the ideas of our EC24 paper with @helger.bsky.social and Roberto

I wonder if we can attack more examples where (1) circuits are adaptively chosen by the adversary, and (2) security proof is in the ROM. It always felt like playing with fire (because ROM does not model potential circuit dependence on the hash function), and this work nicely confirms the concern.