# Hart Montgomery : 2009 Security Meeting

Thursday, April 16, 2009
Location: Fisher Conference Center, Arrillaga Alumni Center

"Robust fingerprinting codes for copy protection and traitor tracing"

Abstract:

Fingerprinting codes, originally designed for embedding traceable fingerprints in digital content, have many applications in cryptography. Most notably, they are used to construct traitor tracing systems. Recently there has been some interest in constructing {\em robust} fingerprinting codes: codes capable of tracing words even when the pirate adversarially destroys a $\delta$ fraction of the marks in the fingerprint. The best construction to date, due to Boneh and Naor, produces codewords whose length is proportional to $c^4/(1-\delta)^2$ where $c$ is the number of words at the adversary's disposal. We construct codes whose length is proportional to $(c \log c)^2 / (1-\delta)$, which is optimal up to $\log c$ factors. These new codes lead to traitor tracing systems with constant size ciphertext and much shorter secret keys than previously possible.

Bio:

Hart Montgomery is a first-year Ph.D. student advised by Dan Boneh. Originally from Columbia, South Carolina, Hart attended Princeton University, where he majored in computer science. Hart's primary area of interest is theoretical cryptography.