Tianxin Tang

So this is a silly story, but for a year or two in 2013/2014 I went around telling everyone I could find about this little cryptography library called “OpenSSL” and how it was used everywhere, but had almost no developers or security budget.

We’re hiring up to 6 faculty in Cybersecurity at the CS Department, Aarhus University! All ranks, tenure-track Assistant to Full Professor. Broad scope: quantum, AI, cryptography, systems, languages, verification, and more. Come join us! Deadline: 14 Dec 2026. www.au.dk/om/stillinge...

www.derekthompson.org/p/i-know-why... (beautifully written)

Tyrannosaurus xkcd.com/3300/

New paper (ia.cr/2026/2126) with Àlex Rodríguez García. We give polynomial-time (!) adaptive attacks against a number of threshold Schnorr signatures. At the core are the first polynomial-time attacks on LDVR, a problem whose solution yields adaptive attacks on several practical schemes.

Everyone and their mother is using AI to find bugs. We used AI to build static-analysis and formal verification tooling for Miden’s zkVM. The new linter found a signature validation bypass, and the formal verification work resulted in 95 correctness proofs. blog.trailofbits.com/2026/09/18/a...

STOC call for papers is out. Deadline is November 2. acm-stoc.org/stoc202... New rules for the AI era: limited submissions, public posting and a required video. Is it a coincidence that the camera-ready deadline is April Fools Day?

Sorry, XKCD.

dontpastetheai.com (currently struggling with this a lot with masters students...)

arxiv.org/abs/2608.16753 (Mathematics in the age of AI by Terence Tao)

You can also register to attend WAC8--the workshop on attacks in cryptography, an affiliated event with Crypto 2026--remotely (for free). Just fill out this google form: forms.gle/1anNohNaJmtA...

You may have been told to watch this video about the OpenAI AI hack. You really should, even if you don't usually care about any tech stuff. If nothing else, click this link to the 18 minutes in & see how the agents spoke & coordinated with each other. Its eye opening. youtu.be/87DyyMV0kCY?...

Some initial thoughts, and a complicated mix of feelings. Wow. I mean, Erdos problems are cool (I genuinely mean that), I didn't know about the Jacobian conjecture before it got disproved. But this newest batch from OpenAI hits home in a way the previous announcements did not.

This is a very cool and exciting discovery by Claude Mythos! It found a serious 𝒎𝒂𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒎𝒂𝒕𝒊𝒄𝒂𝒍 attack on the post-quantum signature scheme HAWK, an "on-ramp" candidate for potential NIST standardization. www.anthropic.com/research/dis...

Every four years, the math world’s preeminent awards are given to the finest minds of a generation. The young Fields and Abacus Medal winners — all under 40 on the first day of the year — have reshaped mathematics and theoretical computer science. Here are the #ICM2026 winners:

The IACR board has put forward a proposal to revamp the publishing of the general conference proceedings for Eurocrypt, Crypto, and Asiacrypt. iacr.org/hybridpropos... I would encourage members to engage in discussion about this on iacr.org/discuss

Researchers have long suspected that for some computational problems, checking a solution is only possible with an exotic mathematical object called a quantum proof — no ordinary written document will do. Now, a team of researchers has finally confirmed it. www.quantamagazine.org/researchers-...

Principles for pRHL Proofs of Cryptographic Protocols: How to Convince EasyCrypt that your Protocol is Secure (Manuel Barbosa, François Dupressoir, Cameron Low, Charlotte Mylog, Sabine Oechsner, Théo Vignon) ia.cr/2026/1334

There we go. US Gov tightens post-quantum cryptography transition deadlines for high-value systems to 2030 for key exchange and 2031 for signatures. Also, speeding up the CMVP (FIPS 140 validation) processes. That’s how you know the rush is real. The quantum computers are (potentially) coming.

I am looking for a (fully funded) PhD student working with me in Glasgow on provable security! www.iacr.org/jobs/item/4226

Seems like a nice program. See you at Bristol :) uk-crypto-day.github.io/2026/06/17/u...

The Workshop on Attacks in Cryptography 8 (WAC8) website is finally up, and our call for talks is open. Submit your cool cryptanalysis before July 3! We'll also invite speakers. If you had a favorite cryptographic attack from the last two years that we should invite, please put it in the comments.

the super secret project i've been working on the past year is out

We've now posted the schedule for the event. Come for a day of insightful and engaging talks. eipsi.win.tue.nl/surveillance...

Security in Times of Surveillance eipsi.win.tue.nl/surveillance... w Marrtin Albrecht @malb.bsky.social Chloé Berthélémy (EDRi), Rikke Bjerg Jensen (RHUL), Thomas Lohninger @socialhack.bsky.social Björn Ruytenberg @0xiphorus.infosec.exchange.ap.brid.gy Carmela Troncoso @carmelatroncoso.bsky.social

UNSW Sydney is hiring an associate professor and a lecturer in cryptography, and the description explicitly mentions *secure computation*. Didn't you want to live in the sunniest of the most livable cities in the world?

2/2 "The trick is actually fixing the evaluations. It’s going to be a problem of the way we evaluate language models. We need to reward them for being humble, and saying occasionally, ‘I don’t know,’ or asking a question," said OpenAI's Adam Kalai at the Simons Institute.

For anyone interested in being a tadpole reviewer (interesting concept, suitable for PhD students and early post-docs) for PETS 2027, you can submit an application using the following link: cryptpad.fr/form/#/2/for.... The PC application form can also be found on the website.

You may find the comments by Melanie Matchett Wood on the discovery of a counter example to Erdős’ Unit Distance Conjecture as interesting as I did 👇🏼(see previous post for a link)

Nice show, plenty of information on the latest developments of quantum computers zeroknowledge.fm/podcast/400/

Nominate yourself to help review papers for USENIX Security 2027! sec-rms.com/submit-appli... (or rms.swag.cispa.de/submit-appli... ). Deadline: May 28, 2026. We're looking for both senior and junior people. See Andrei Sabelfeld's LinkedIn post for more info: www.linkedin.com/feed/update/...

Go MAYO!! Moving to the third round of the PQC NIST process!

Round 3 of the NIST additional signatures process announced! 🎉 And SQIsign is part of it!! ⛷️⛷️

This 1952 memo from the Pentagon UFO files is superb There is no point preparing for aliens ‘because no one of consequence is going to take this rubbish seriously unless it happens. At that point, our policy will be determined in the traditional manner of grand panic.’ 🤣 www.war.gov/medialink/uf...

Join us tomorrow for ProTeCS, one of Eurocrypt’s affiliated events! We are thankful to have two amazing invited speakers, Bart Mennink and Mike Rosulek! We are also happy to have seven contributed talks from the community. Check out our full program here: protecs-workshop.gitlab.io/program

A Survey on Security Reductions in Post-Quantum Cryptography (Thomas Attema, Ronald Cramer, Serge Fehr, Yu-Hsuan Huang, Bor de Kock, Jana Sotáková) ia.cr/2026/846

The Cryptographic Applications Workshop (CAW) happens this Sunday in Rome! Just a reminder that if you're not coming to Rome you can still attend remotely. Just register here: forms.gle/2JZ7hLs8diQM... before May 8. See caw.cryptanalysis.fun for more infos and our program.

Collected all badges!

Two weeks ago, Google published a paper proving in zero-knowledge that they had an efficient implementation of Shor's algorithm. Today, Trail of Bits can prove that we have an even better implementation which beats Google's on all metrics! 🫢 blog.trailofbits.com/2026/04/17/w...

I'm looking for a PhD student to work with me on formal verification for cryptographic protocols. This is a 4-year position at VU Amsterdam, co-supervised with Kristina Sojakova. Send me an email if you want to know more!

Open Problems in List Decoding and Correlated Agreement (Gal Arnon, Dan Boneh, Giacomo Fenzi) ia.cr/2026/680

The Signal protocol is well documented but hard to grasp the first time. Especially what's happening under the hood while using a messaging app. I built an educational tool that lets you chat on a simulated phone and see protocol details in real time, completely offline. Enjoy!

Major announcement: My highly successful Applied Cryptography course taught last year at the American University of Beirut is returning as an online course, available for FREE for any qualifying student from any Lebanese university! Read more + apply today — and please spread the word!

Huge congrats to Bennett and Brassard for the well-deserved award, but the highlighted sentence from the ACM announcement (www.acm.org/media-center...) is a rather odd take on PQC ...

Watching remotely? You can follow Real World Crypto 2026 on YouTube livestreams (also available via the website): Day 1 (Mar 9): youtube.com/live/QQhyxFj... Day 2 (Mar 10): youtube.com/live/00zvMSW... Day 3 (Mar 11): youtube.com/live/v_AFtbW...

If you liked this experiment, I published a full piece today in the same vein: a text that gets 100 years older with every section, from a modern blog post to a medieval chronicle. It's a single story spanning 1000 years of English. See how far you get. www.deadlanguagesociety.com/p/how-far-ba...

monosketch.io (pretty nice tool!)

The IACR board sent a survey to members last year, and it took us a while to analyze the results and publish findings. You can see them at iacr.org/surveyresults/