Transcript tremel slides

The Council of Shadows
Brown University
Presented by Edward Tremel, Computational
Archaeologist
A Mysterious
Disappearance

 Setting: Providence,
two years ago
 CS research group
vanishes without trace
 Mysterious events
surround
disappearance
 Rain of blood
 Unexplainable
earthquake
Investigation Leads to Puzzling Discovery
Document Fell Behind File Cabinet in Disused CIT Basement
The Ill-Fated Group’s
Results?

 Brown faculty deny
existence of Council of
Shadows
 No such project ever
funded
 Results appear
publishable
Search For Lost Archive Leads To LongAbandoned Tunnel
Reached Beneath Basement of University Hall
A Discovery of Ill Portent

 Bricked up within
building’s walls
 Bound in human skin
 Aura of corruption
 Obscure and forbidding
runes
The Problem With
Cryptography

Time to Sign (ms)
RSA Signature Cost
14
12
10
8
6
4
2
0
512
1024
2048
RSA Modulus Size (bits)
4096
SNARK Verification Time
12000
Time to Verify (ms)
 Must sacrifice efficiency
for security
 Often does not scale
 Fundamental
operations involve
difficult computation
 Optimizing math
libraries a thankless
task
10000
8000
6000
4000
2000
0
0
5000
10000 15000
Input Size (KB)
20000
25000
Black Magic: The
Solution?

 Instead, sacrifice the
blood of the innocent
for both efficiency and
security
 Often suggested in
theory, but impossible
in practice until book’s
discovery
 Detailed instructions
for rituals
Gathering the Materials

 3 human hearts
 2 pounds flesh
 Extract of Nightshade
 Aura of Pestilence
 Stone carved with Elder
Sign
 Defiled altar of the
Elder Gods
 1 goat
The Horrifying
Experiment

 Unsuccessful attempts
 Required additional
grave robbing
 Accidentally summoned
disgusting tentacle
monster
 Some incantations
granted power, but too
unstable to use
Exploiting the Dark Arts

 Success: opened stable
portal to plane of Elder
Gods
 Black magic used to
solve modular
exponentiation
 Arcane forces allowed
impossibly fast
computation
Corruption-Based
Computation

 Low-level math library
constructed with
diabolical forces
 ModExp, Group ops,
Field ops, Elliptic Curve
pairings
 Channel to Abyss used
for source of true
randomness
Group/Field
operations
Elliptic
Curve
operations
Impossibly
optimized assembly
arithmetic
RSA
encrypt &
decrypt
Source
of True
Random
Chaos of the
Abyss
Promising Results

Cryptography operations
12
Total time (ms)
10
8
Best current implementation
6
Prototype CBC implementation
4
2
0
RSA Sign
RSA Verify
Group multiply
Group pairing
But At What Cost?

 Channel to Abyss may
not be as stable as
originally thought
 Chaos leaking into
mortal plane
 Increased incidence of
unholy monstrosities in
Providence area
He comes, oh god, he comes