Luca De Feo

Without immediate intervention, the last reporters in Gaza will die July 21, 2025 AFP has been working with 1 writer, 3 photographers and 6 videographers, all freelance, in the Gaza Strip since its staff journalists left in 2024. Along with a few others, they are now the only ones left to report what is happening in the Gaza Strip. The international press has been banned from entering the territory for nearly two years. We refuse to watch them die. One of them, Bashar, has been working with AFP since 2010, first as a fixer, then freelance photographer, and since 2024, as lead photographer. On July 19th he managed to post a message on Facebook: “I no longer have the strength to work for the media. My body is thin and I can’t work anymore.” Bashar, 30, works & lives in the same conditions as all Gazans, moving from one refugee camp to another under Israeli bombings. For > a year he’s lived in utter destitution, working at extreme risk to his life. Hygiene is a major issue for him, with recurring bouts of severe intestinal illness. Since Feb, Bashar’s been living in the ruins of his home in Gaza City with his mother, 4 brothers & sisters and the family of one of his brothers. Their house is devoid of any furnishings, except a few cushions. On Sunday morning, he reported that one of his brothers had “fallen, due to hunger.” Even though these journalists receive a monthly salary from AFP, it’s no longer enough to buy food, or they have to pay completely exorbitant prices. The banking system has collapsed, and those who exchange money via online bank accounts charge a commission of up to 40%. AFP no longer has the ability to provide them with a vehicle and there is not enough fuel to allow these journalists to travel for their reporting. Driving a car means becoming a target for Israeli airstrikes. AFP reporters therefore travel on foot or by donkey cart. (alt txt continued in next post)

A horrifying statement published today by the Editorial Committee of the Agence France-Presse (AFP) news agency.

"Without immediate intervention, the last reporters in Gaza will die"

Translation from French to English by @cnorristrent.bsky.social:

Abstract. This paper presents implementations that match and, where possible, exceed current quantum factorisation records using a VIC-20 8-bit home computer from 1981, an abacus, and a dog. We hope that this work will inspire future efforts to match any further quantum factorisation records, should they arise.

Replication of Quantum Factorisation Records with an 8-bit Home Computer, an Abacus, and a Dog (Peter Gutmann, Stephan Neuhaus) ia.cr/2025/1237

C'est à peu près comme ça que cela se passe en Suisse, à la différence près que les créanciers doivent passer par un opérateur (e-bill) qui se fait une marge: www.ebill.ch/en/home.html

Orange Me2eets: We made an end-to-end encrypted video calling app and it was easy Orange Meets, our open-source video calling web application, now supports end-to-end encryption using the MLS protocol with continuous group key agreement

Cloudflare has launched Orange Me2eets, an open-source end-to-end encrypted video calling demo! Built on top of our OpenMLS implementation, this project showcases secure, private real-time communication.

buff.ly/eEdJdnf

#Cloudflare #E2EE #VideoCalling #OpenSource #OpenMLS

Single author, fifteen pages, reduces the bit complexity of millenia-old UOV instances!!

Registration for the Leuven Isogeny Days 6 is now open!
📅 10–12 Sept 2025 @ KU Leuven
Morning: research talks
Afternoon: brainstorming sessions
More info: www.esat.kuleuven.be/cosic/projec...
#isogeny #isocrypt #erc #postquantum

We (finally) published all the material from this course on SQIsign, including lecture slides and exercise sheets for the Sage laboratory. Available here: github.com/andreavico/S...

AFRICACRYPT'25 accepted papers (africacrypt2025.sciencesconf.org/resource/page/…) & invited speakers (https://africacrypt2025.sciencesconf.org/resource/page/id/11) are online.
Early registration deadline is May 30th (africacrypt2025.sciencesconf.org/resource/page/���).
See you in Rabat 🇲🇦 in July! 😉

«[Nicușor Dan] part en 1992 en France poursuivre ses études à l’École normale supérieure de la rue d’Ulm. Il y obtient un DEA puis soutient en 1998 un doctorat en mathématiques à l’Université Paris XIII […] sous la direction de Christophe Soulé.»

→ Je me demande si je l'ai croisé, du coup. 🤔

A timeline of isogeny-based signatures over the years: 2012 - A signature from group actions: First signature from isogenies in the literature 2014 - SIDH: Also proposes an identification protocol 2016 - GPS: First signature from endomorphism ring knowledge 2018 - SeaSign: First signature based on CSIDH 2020 - SQIsign: Compact and “practical" signature from endomorphism ring knowledge 2023 - SQIsignHD: HD representations make SQIsign signing much faster 2024 - SQIsign2D: Significantly improved SQIsign signing and verification

Isogeny-based signatures have consistently had a breakthrough every two years! Let's see what 2026 will bring...

(Well, except for SQIsignHD that came a year too late, but that's probably because of Covid)

Title of the PhD course: Advances in Cryptography and Codes - Part 1: SQIsign Lecturers: Andrea Basso (IBM Research Zurich, CH), Luciano Maino (University of Bristol, UK) The course in short: The course offers a comprehensive and rigorous introduction to SQIsign, an advanced isogeny-based digital signature scheme designed to resist attacks from quantum computers. The course will present the mathematical foundations on which SQIsign is based and the algorithmic background necessary to understand and evaluate the security of SQIsign and other isogeny-based protocols. Complementing the theoretical material, the course also includes a practical laboratory where students will use SageMath to study and implement various aspects of SQIsign. Where (in presence): Department of Mathematics, University of Trento (IT) Via Sommarive, 5, 38123, Trento (online): https://unitn.zoom.us/j/88902079708 (Passcode: 532383) When: From May 19, 2025 to May 28, 2025 Detailed Program: Monday 19/05 10:30 - 12:30 (Room A205) & 14:30 - 16:30 (Room A221) Tuesday 20/05 10:30 - 12:30 (Room A215) & 14:30 - 16:30 (Room A213) Wednesday 21/05 10:30 - 12:30 (Room A218) & 14:30 - 16:30 (Room A215) Thursday 22/05 10:30 - 12:30 (Room A209) & 14:30 - 16:30 (Room A220) Friday 23/05 10:30 - 12:30 (Room A215) & 14:30 - 16:30 (Room A215) Tuesday 27/05 11:30 - 12:30 – Q&A, optional (Room A218) Wednesday 28/05 11:30 - 12:30 – Q&A, optional (Room A218)

Next week @lucianomaino.bsky.social and I will teach a week-long course on SQIsign at the University of Trento.

The course will be both in-person and online: if you're interested, you can tune in Monday morning at 10:30 at unitn.zoom.us/j/88902079708

(details and full schedule in the image below)

...Hiroshi's talk is over. We still have power. Applause. Earth is saved. Long live SQIsign!

The tension is palpable in the room as Hiroshi reaches the slide that caused the power outage...

We're sorry for the power outage. It's fixed now, it won't happen again, pinky promise.

We resume at 9:30 as per schedule!

Famous last words...

There's still no power in most of Spain, diesel generators are buzzing on campus, we only have occasional access to the internet.

We're having the best isogeny time of our lives here in Lleida, but none of it will be televised!

See you tomorrow for the second day, hopefully!

Sorry for the interruption, there is a power outage in the University!

We hope to be back at 2pm, Lleida time...

Used without having the rights 😬... Hopefully I won't be arrested crossing the border

And if you really can't make it*, there's more good news... all the talks will be streamed! Link in the program: www.cig.udl.cat/SQIparty2025...

*Please do not register if you only plan to attend remotely, that would mess our headcount for the social activities.

The SQIparty starts on Monday, but it's still time to register!

We prepared an exciting program for you with a balanced mix of talks, coding sprints, skillshares and other activities!

www.cig.udl.cat/SQIparty2025...

See you in Lleida!

The Isogeny Club - Brainstorm Days! - This event is a two-day affiliated event at Eurocrypt 2025, hosted in Madrid, Spain, and will take place on Saturday, May 3, and Sunday, May 4.
Registration via the Eurocrypt 2025 registration process.
isogeny.club/eurocrypt

Good news is that we're still accepting brainstorm topics!! If you have a brainstorm idea, send us a short description by email !

Season 6 of the Isogeny Club is officially done! You can catch up with all the talks here: isogeny.club

If, like us, you haven't had enough isogenies for the term, be sure to join us at the Brainstorm Sessions affiliated with Eurocrypt: isogeny.club/eurocrypt

New work: we explain cubical arithmetic in simple terms to show you how easy it is to compute pairings. Essentially, you only need to know the Montgomery ladder!

As a bonus, pairings from cubical arithmetic are faster than those from Miller's loop for applications in isogeny-based cryptography.

EC24 Local Tips Local tips for Eurocrypt 2024

If there is interest in putting this info on a mobile-friendly map like we did for EC'24 (ec24-tips.github.io) I'm happy to provide assistance.

en 2 = émietter ?

🫣 j'ai honte

That's another odd dunking on Let's Encrypt. Their tools are open source, you can use them to run your own automated CA. Let's Encrypt is making decentralized trust in TLS easier. It's still a long way in the future, but running a federated CA looks somehow less unrealistic after Let's Encrypt.

Strange singling out Let's Encrypt. I'd say LE with all its automated tooling is the cure, not the cause of broken certificates? Any evidence that LE has increased the number of websites with broken TLS?
The HTTPS everywhere trend started before LE and is mostly the making of the browsers.

Deadline to submit to this conference is today!

Heu... la feature en question existe dans Signal: support.signal.org/hc/en-us/art...

Ce serait un peu le b-a-ba de l'utilisation de Signal pour discuter de tes plans de guerre avec tes potos de la Maison Blanche, mais visiblement ils ne connaissent pas.

Yes! RWC ❤️ Number Theory.

Congrats to the CADO-NFS team!