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This content will become publicly available on December 16, 2023

Title: Distributed Cyber-infrastructures and Artificial Intelligence in Hybrid Post-Quantum Era
Distributed cyber-infrastructures and Artificial Intelligence (AI) are transformative technologies that will play a pivotal role in the future of society and the scientific community. Internet of Things (IoT) applications harbor vast quantities of connected devices that collect a massive amount of sensitive information (e.g., medical, financial), which is usually analyzed either at the edge or federated cloud systems via AI/Machine Learning (ML) algorithms to make critical decisions (e.g., diagnosis). It is of paramount importance to ensure the security, privacy, and trustworthiness of data collection, analysis, and decision-making processes. However, system complexity and increased attack surfaces make these applications vulnerable to system breaches, single-point of failures, and various cyber-attacks. Moreover, the advances in quantum computing exacerbate the security and privacy challenges. That is, emerging quantum computers can break conventional cryptographic systems that offer cyber-security services, public key infrastructures, and privacy-enhancing technologies. Therefore, there is a vital need for new cyber-security paradigms that can address the resiliency, long-term security, and efficiency requirements of distributed cyber infrastructures. In this work, we propose a vision of distributed architecture and cyber-security framework that uniquely synergizes secure computation, Physical Quantum Key Distribution (PQKD), NIST PostQuantum Cryptography (PQC) efforts, and AI/ML algorithms to achieve breach-resilient, functional, and efficient more » cyber-security services. At the heart of our proposal lies a new Multi-Party Computation Quantum Network Core (MPC-QNC) that enables fast and yet quantum-safe execution of distributed computation protocols via integration of PQKD infrastructure and hardware acceleration elements. We showcase the capabilities of MPCQNC by instantiating it for Public Key Infrastructures (PKI) and federated ML in our HDQPKI and TPQ-ML, frameworks, respectively. HDQPKI (to the best of our knowledge) is the first hybrid and distributed post-quantum PKI that harnesses PQKD and NIST PQC standards to offer the highest level of quantum safety with a breach-resiliency against active adversaries. TPQ-ML presents a post-quantum secure and privacy-preserving federated ML infrastructure. « less
Authors:
; ; ; ;
Award ID(s):
1917627
Publication Date:
NSF-PAR ID:
10388349
Journal Name:
4th IEEE International Conference on Trust, Privacy and Security in Intelligent Systems, and Applications (IEEE TPS)
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
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