Muhammed F. Esgin

Faculty of Information Technology, Monash University

Clayton, VIC 3800, Australia

I am interested in mathematical aspects of cybersecurity, particularly around cryptography. My current research focuses are quantum-safe cryptography (particularly, from lattices and hash functions), privacy-enhancing technologies, zero-knowledge proofs and blockchain protocols as well as their real-life applications to establish various security features such as confidentiality, integrity, privacy, anonymity and accountability in practice. I have also worked on symmetric-key cryptography and classical public-key cryptography.

I currently work as a lecturer at the Faculty of Information Technology, Monash University, where I also serve as the Deputy Course Director of Master of Cybersecurity and the Deputy Director of Post-Quantum Cryptography in the Indo-Pacific (PQCIP) Program. Before that, I was a post-doc at Monash and CSIRO’s Data61 jointly. I also did a research internship at IBM Research, Zurich, hosted by Vadim Lyubashevsky. I completed my PhD at Monash under the supervision of Ron Steinfeld, Joseph Liu and Dongxi Liu.

I used to organise Monash Software Systems and Cybersecurity (SSC) Seminars. If you are interested in cutting-edge research in cybersecurity, sofware engineering and data engineering, see our website for past and upcoming events.

I have multiple PhD scholarships available. Please refer to supervision.

This webpage is currently under development. If you spot any issues, please contact me via email (provided at the end of the page).

Notable Contributions

LUNA: Most efficient (designated verifier) zk-SNARK from lattices
LaV: Most efficient quantum-safe verifiable random function (VRF)
MatRiCT+: One of the most efficient quantum-safe ring signatures and private blockchain payment protocol
DualRing: One of the most efficient ring signatures (classical and quantum-safe)
LB-VRF: First practical quantum-safe (few-time) verifiable random function (VRF)
LAS: First quantum-safe adaptor signature and payment channel network
MatRiCT: First practical quantum-safe private blockchain payment based on ring signatures (a.k.a. RingCT)
MatRing: First practical and scalable ring signature based on lattices

Program Committee Memberships

2025: ACM CCS, The Web Conference, Financial Cryptography, ACISP
2024: ACM CCS
2023: ACM AsiaCCS, ASIACRYPT
2021: ACISP

news

Oct 24, 2024	We have been awarded a Faculty Education Excellence Award - Industry and Community Education Programs for our Post-Quantum Cryptography in the Indo-Pacific (PQCIP) Program!
Aug 30, 2024	DualRing-PRF received the best paper award at ACISP 2024! Well done Xinyu!
Jun 7, 2024	‘Loquat: A SNARK-Friendly Post-Quantum Signature based on the Legendre PRF with Applications in Ring and Aggregate Signatures’ is accepted to appear at CRYPTO 2024 (CORE Rank: A*)! See the paper here.
Jun 1, 2024	‘LUNA: Quasi-Optimally Succinct Designated-Verifier Zero-Knowledge Arguments from Lattices’ is accepted to appear at ACM CCS 2024 (CORE Rank: A*)! See the paper here.
Mar 16, 2024	I have been awarded an Amazon Research Award with AU$115,000 funding! Co-PI: Ron Steinfeld
Feb 1, 2024	Plover: our masking-friendly hash-and-sign lattice-based signature is accepted to appear at EUROCRYPT 2024 (CORE Rank: A*)! This is joint work with researchers from PQShield. See the paper here.
Jan 9, 2024	A news story that I contributed to about the impact of quantum computing on cybersecurity has been published by the Daily Telegraph. See here (subscription needed).
Jan 9, 2024	I’m invited to give a talk at the Australasian Information Security Conference (AISC 2024) as part of the 2024 Australasian Computer Science Week (ACSW).
Nov 10, 2023	Our quantum-safe hybrid proof system, LANES+, and Verifiable Random Function (VRF), LaV, (appeared at Crypto’23) now have efficient open source implementations here.
May 24, 2023	“Efficient Hybrid Exact/Relaxed Lattice Proofs and Applications to Rounding and VRFs” is accepted to appear at CRYPTO 2023 (CORE rank: A*)! See the full paper here
Apr 24, 2023	Our new blockchain leader election work supporting post-quantum security is accepted at AsiaCCS 2023 (CORE rank: A). You can read it here.
Apr 1, 2023	I gave a talk on lattice-based zero-knowledge proofs (starting from the basics) and MatRiCT family of Monero-style post-quantum blockchain payment protocols. You can watch it here.
Oct 27, 2022	Our survey on post-quantum advanced signatures for blockchain is accepted at ACM Computing Surveys (IF: 14.32)! See the paper here

selected publications

LeOPaRd: Towards Practical Post-Quantum Oblivious PRFs via Interactive Lattice Problems

Muhammed F. Esgin, Ron Steinfeld, Erkan Tairi, and Jie Xu

2024

PDF

CORE Rank: A*

LUNA: Quasi-Optimally Succinct Designated-Verifier Zero-Knowledge Arguments from Lattices

Ron Steinfeld, Amin Sakzad, Muhammed F. Esgin, Veronika Kuchta, Mert Yassi, and Raymond K. Zhao

In ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS), 2024

Bib PDF

@inproceedings{SSE+24,
  author = {Steinfeld, Ron and Sakzad, Amin and Esgin, Muhammed F. and Kuchta, Veronika and Yassi, Mert and Zhao, Raymond K.},
  title = {{LUNA}: Quasi-Optimally Succinct Designated-Verifier Zero-Knowledge Arguments from Lattices},
  booktitle = {{ACM} {SIGSAC} Conference on Computer and Communications Security {(CCS)}},
  series = {},
  volume = {},
  pages = {},
  publisher = {{ACM}},
  year = {2024},
  note = {\url{https://eprint.iacr.org/2022/1690}},
  url = {https://eprint.iacr.org/2022/1690}
}

CORE Rank: A*

Loquat: A SNARK-Friendly Post-Quantum Signature based on the Legendre PRF with Applications in Ring and Aggregate Signatures

Xinyu Zhang, Ron Steinfeld, Muhammed F. Esgin, Joseph K. Liu, Dongxi Liu, and Sushmita Ruj

In CRYPTO, 2024

Bib PDF

@inproceedings{ZSE+24,
  author = {Zhang, Xinyu and Steinfeld, Ron and Esgin, Muhammed F. and Liu, Joseph K. and Liu, Dongxi and Ruj, Sushmita},
  title = {Loquat: A {SNARK}-Friendly Post-Quantum Signature based on the {Legendre} {PRF} with Applications in Ring and Aggregate Signatures},
  booktitle = {{CRYPTO}},
  series = {Lecture Notes in Computer Science},
  volume = {},
  pages = {},
  publisher = {Springer},
  year = {2024},
  note = {\url{https://eprint.iacr.org/2024/868}},
  url = {https://eprint.iacr.org/2024/868}
}

CORE Rank: A*

Plover: Masking-Friendly Hash-and-Sign Lattice Signatures

Muhammed F. Esgin, Thomas Espitau, Guilhem Niot, Thomas Prest, Amin Sakzad, and Ron Steinfeld

In EUROCRYPT, 2024

Bib PDF Code

@inproceedings{EEN+24:Plover,
  author = {Esgin, Muhammed F. and Espitau, Thomas and Niot, Guilhem and Prest, Thomas and Sakzad, Amin and Steinfeld, Ron},
  title = {{Plover}: Masking-Friendly Hash-and-Sign Lattice Signatures},
  booktitle = {EUROCRYPT},
  series = {Lecture Notes in Computer Science},
  volume = {},
  pages = {},
  publisher = {Springer},
  year = {2024},
  note = {(Full version at \url{ia.cr/2024/401}}
}

CORE Rank: A*

BlindHub: Bitcoin-Compatible Privacy-Preserving Payment Channel Hubs Supporting Variable Amounts

Xianrui Qin, Shimin Pan, Arash Mirzaei, Zhimei Sui, Oğuzhan Ersoy, Amin Sakzad, Muhammed F. Esgin, Joseph K. Liu, Jiangshan Yu, and Tsz Hon Yuen

In IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (S&P), 2023

Bib PDF Code

@inproceedings{QPM+23:BlindHub,
  author = {Qin, Xianrui and Pan, Shimin and Mirzaei, Arash and Sui, Zhimei and Ersoy, O\u{g}uzhan and Sakzad, Amin and Esgin, Muhammed F. and Liu, Joseph K. and Yu, Jiangshan and Yuen, Tsz Hon},
  title = {{BlindHub}: {Bitcoin}-Compatible Privacy-Preserving Payment Channel Hubs Supporting Variable Amounts},
  booktitle = {{IEEE} Symposium on Security and Privacy (S\&P)},
  series = {Lecture Notes in Computer Science},
  volume = {},
  pages = {2462--2480},
  publisher = {Springer},
  year = {2023},
  note = {(Full version at \url{ia.cr/2022/1735})}
}

CORE Rank: A*

Efficient Hybrid Exact/Relaxed Lattice Proofs and Applications to Rounding and VRFs

Muhammed F. Esgin, Ron Steinfeld, Dongxi Liu, and Sushmita Ruj

In CRYPTO, 2023

Bib PDF Code Video

@inproceedings{ESLR23,
  author = {Esgin, Muhammed F. and Steinfeld, Ron and Liu, Dongxi and Ruj, Sushmita},
  title = {Efficient Hybrid Exact/Relaxed Lattice Proofs and Applications to Rounding and {VRFs}},
  booktitle = {{CRYPTO}},
  series = {Lecture Notes in Computer Science},
  volume = {},
  pages = {},
  publisher = {Springer},
  year = {2023},
  note = {(Full version at \url{ia.cr/2022/141})}
}

CORE Rank: A

A New Look at Blockchain Leader Election: Simple, Efficient, Sustainable and Post-Quantum

Muhammed F. Esgin, Oguzhan Ersoy, Veronika Kuchta, Julian Loss, Amin Sakzad, Ron Steinfeld, Wayne Yang, and Raymond K. Zhao

In ACM Asia Conference on Computer and Communications Security (ACM AsiaCCS), 2023

Bib PDF Code

@inproceedings{EEK+23,
  author = {Esgin, Muhammed F. and Ersoy, Oguzhan and Kuchta, Veronika and Loss, Julian and Sakzad, Amin and Steinfeld, Ron and Yang, Wayne and Zhao, Raymond K.},
  title = {A New Look at Blockchain Leader Election: Simple, Efficient, Sustainable and Post-Quantum},
  booktitle = {ACM Asia Conference on Computer and Communications Security (ACM AsiaCCS)},
  series = {},
  volume = {},
  pages = {},
  publisher = {ACM},
  year = {2023}
}