Mikhail Kudinov

🎓 After 4 years, 7 papers, countless joyful moments, and meeting so many great people along the way, I’m excited to share that I’ve officially obtained my PhD!

It’s been an incredible journey of learning, persistence, and growth.

My thesis is now available here:
🔗 pure.tue.nl/ws/portalfil...

Delete twitter from the phone. So you only get there from you computer (if you even need that)

We are alarmed by reports that Germany is on the verge of a catastrophic about-face, reversing its longstanding and principled opposition to the EU’s Chat Control proposal which, if passed, could spell the end of the right to privacy in Europe. signal.org/blog/pdfs/ge...

I’m flagging this nice book/paper on FHE schemes not necessarily because it’s correct and I endorse it, but because it looks pretty useful. arxiv.org/pdf/2503.05136

CryptoCorgi

Some can always find a way to communicate and get uncensored information. But the goal is to disconnect the general audience from accessing independent news. It is important to fight censorship not for your own access, but for those who won’t fight.

I get mine from news.zksecurity.com :)
And zkmesh.substack.com

EU Chat Control criticized by 500 cryptographers over privacy risks

Over 500 cryptographers warn the EU draft “Chat Control” could weaken end‑to‑end encryption. The EU council votes on the Danish text on Sep 12, 2025. https://getnews.me/eu-chat-control-criticized-by-500-cryptographers-over-privacy-risks/ #euchatcontrol #privacy #cryptography

Will there be a recording?

That is wild! I am envious of your students; that is top-level material!

I'm thrilled to announce that after months of intensive work, the complete materials for my Applied Cryptography course at the American University of Beirut are now finished: both Part 1 (Provable Security) and Part 2 (Real-World Cryptography)!

YouTube video by Nadim Kobeissi Nadim Kobeissi's Applied Cryptography Course

I made a video about my upcoming applied cryptography course: youtu.be/z6kK7rIbyB0

Crypto 2025 is just around the corner! Check out the full program here:
crypto.iacr.org/2025/program...

Join us on Monday for our talk where we explore the tradeoffs of hash-based signatures.

We then apply these findings to propose post-quantum Ethereum PoS signatures:
eprint.iacr.org/2025/1332

Abstract. In this note, we present a new instantiation of the hash-based multi-signature framework introduced by Drake, Khovratovich, Kudinov, and Wagner (CiC Vol 2 Issue 1, eprint 2025/055) for Ethereum’s consensus layer. Inspired by a recent work of Khovratovich, Kudinov, and Wagner (Crypto 2025, eprint 2025/889), we instantiate the framework with a novel incomparable encoding that improves the tradeoff between signature size and verification hashing. The purpose of this document is to make explicit how to use the ideas of the latter work within the framework of Drake, Khovratovich, Kudinov, and Wagner.

Technical Note: LeanSig for Post-Quantum Ethereum (Justin Drake, Dmitry Khovratovich, Mikhail Kudinov, Benedikt Wagner) ia.cr/2025/1332

I am rereading the comics. These are great an so many new ones came out :)

The EU wants to decrypt your private data by 2030 The EU Commission unveiled the first step in its security strategy to ensure "lawful and effective" law enforcement access to data

This battle will keep playing out over and over again until they achieve something that their own citizens have made it clear they don’t want. www.techradar.com/vpn/vpn-priv...

You never asked 😅

YouTube video by PewDiePie I'm DONE with Google

PewDiePie’s evolution into a tech geek is so cool! His recent video dives deep into privacy concerns and surveillance issues, while being still fun to watch. I think these are the topics that couldn’t be more relevant today. Highly recommend watching his take on it:

🔗 youtu.be/u_Lxkt50xOg?...

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

A touchpad is also acceptable, but if you are using a mouse, why would you use Apple’s? :)

Apple announces that TLS client connections in version 26+ will be using hybrid PQ X25519MLKEM768 by default

support.apple.com/en-us/122756

A nice 127 pages read 🥲

Abstract. Hash-based signatures have been studied for decades and have recently gained renewed attention due to their post-quantum security. At the core of the most prominent hash-based signature schemes, XMSS and SPHINCS+, lies a one-time signature scheme based on hash chains due to Winternitz. In this scheme, messages are encoded into vectors of positions (i.e., vertices in a hypercube) in the hash chains, and the signature contains the respective chain elements. The encoding process is crucial for the efficiency and security of this construction. In particular, it determines a tradeoff between signature size and computational costs. Researchers have been trying to improve this size-time tradeoff curve for decades, but all improvements have been arguably marginal. In this work, we revisit the encoding process with the goal of minimizing verification costs and signature sizes. As our first result, we present a novel lower bound for the verification cost given a fixed signature size. Our lower bound is the first to directly apply to general encodings including randomized, non-uniform, and non-injective ones. Then, we present new encodings and prove their security. Inspired by our lower bound, these encodings follow a counterintuitive approach: we map messages non-uniformly into the top layers of a much bigger hypercube than needed but the encoding itself has (hard to find) collisions. With this, we get a 20 % to 40 % improvement in the verification cost of the signature while keeping the same security level and the same size. Our constructions can be directly plugged into any signature scheme based on hash chains, which includes SPHINCS+ and XMSS.

Image showing part 2 of abstract.

At the Top of the Hypercube – Better Size-Time Tradeoffs for Hash-Based Signatures (Dmitry Khovratovich, Mikhail Kudinov, Benedikt Wagner) ia.cr/2025/889

Will there be a recording?

Hacking Cryptography Learn how the good guys implement cryptography and how the bad guys exploit it.</b> Everything we do in the digital world is protected by cryptography. But when pure math and algorithms are implement...

Great initiative!

Saw some references for Go. Can I suggest a recent one: www.manning.com/books/hackin...

Excited to be heading to #Eurocrypt2025 in Madrid soon!

I’ll be speaking at Algebraic Hash Cryptanalysis Days on Security Requirements in the Context of Hash-Based Signatures.

Catch me at the affiliated events or during the main conference. Let’s connect! #Cryptography #Madrid

YouTube video by PQCrypto conference videos Treating Dishonest Ciphertexts in Post Quantum KEMs – Explicit vs Implicit Rejection in the FO T

🎤 My talk from #PQCrypto2025 is now live on YouTube!

I discussed rejection types in KEMs. Why they matter, how they impact security and which one should you choose.

Check it out & let me know your thoughts! 👇
📺 youtu.be/W-gUd_qTUs4?...

#PostQuantum #Cryptography #KEMs

Did they discuss the applications?