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. 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 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).

Program Committee Memberships

ASIACRYPT 2023
ACM AsiaCCS 2023
ACISP 2021

news

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

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})}
}

Private Re-Randomization for Module LWE and Applications to Quasi-Optimal ZK-SNARKs

Ron Steinfeld, Amin Sakzad, Muhammed F. Esgin, and Veronika Kuchta

2022

Bib PDF

@misc{SSEK23,
  author = {Steinfeld, Ron and Sakzad, Amin and Esgin, Muhammed F. and Kuchta, Veronika},
  title = {Private Re-Randomization for Module {LWE} and Applications to Quasi-Optimal {ZK-SNARKs}},
  howpublished = {Cryptology ePrint Archive, Paper 2022/1690},
  year = {2022},
  note = {\url{https://eprint.iacr.org/2022/1690}},
  url = {https://eprint.iacr.org/2022/1690}
}

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}
}

CORE Rank: A*

A Survey on Exotic Signatures for Post-Quantum Blockchain: Challenges & Research Directions

Maxime Buser, Rafael Dowsley, Muhammed F. Esgin, Clémentine Gritti, Shabnam Kasra Kermanshahi, Veronika Kuchta, Jason T. LeGrow, Joseph K. Liu, Raphael C.-W. Phan, Amin Sakzad, Ron Steinfeld, and Jiangshan Yu

ACM Computing Surveys, 2022

Bib PDF

@article{BDE+22:Survey,
  author = {Buser, Maxime and Dowsley, Rafael and Esgin, Muhammed F. and Gritti, Clémentine and Kermanshahi, Shabnam Kasra and Kuchta, Veronika and LeGrow, Jason T. and Liu, Joseph K. and Phan, Raphael C.-W. and Sakzad, Amin and Steinfeld, Ron and Yu, Jiangshan},
  title = {A Survey on Exotic Signatures for Post-Quantum Blockchain: Challenges \& Research Directions},
  journal = {ACM Computing Surveys},
  year = {2022},
  note = {\url{https://eprint.iacr.org/2022/1151}},
  url = {https://eprint.iacr.org/2022/1151}
}