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Department Faculty Partner with CBT Holding to Study and Apply VTE

May 31, 2016

USF Professors Ligatti, Liu, and Goldgof have begun a project titled "Analysis of Cryptographic Primitives and Protocols" to document the properties and performance of a new technology known as VTE, for Virtual Tunneling Effect. VTE is a cryptographic technique in which keys are neither transferred nor stored.

The project is sponsored by CBT Holding, lasts from 5/9/16 to 5/8/17, and is funded in the amount of $56,649, with an additional $56,649 in matching funds applied for from the Florida High Tech Corridor.

The project aims to evaluate, identify, define, and expand on applications for VTE, and to articulate the novelty and desired properties of the new systems.

The project is expected to include the study of new system designs and the related research on key generation and associated elimination of conventional key distribution and storage as part of the innovation. The scope of work includes the formalization of the primary cryptographic primitives and protocols, verifying that those primitives and protocols satisfy desired properties, such as that the new systems maintain secrecy while obviating key distribution and PKIs, and that the new systems properly form AES keys. VTE currently utilizes AES and is certified by NIST.