Speaker: Kevin Lewi
Title: WhatsApp Key Transparency
Location: Soda 465
Abstract: WhatsApp has launched a new cryptographic security feature to automatically verify a secured connection based on key transparency. In this presentation, we’ll first talk about what is key transparency and why it is important in the context of end-to-end encrypted messaging. Then, we’ll provide an overview of the Merkle tree system that we have recently deployed, based on the academic works of SEEMless (CCS 2019) and Parakeet (NDSS 2023). The system we’ve deployed has also been made available as an open-source Rust library called AKD. There are lots of interesting research directions to discuss here.
Bio: Kevin Lewi is a software engineer at Meta. He has worked on the development of the OPAQUE protocol and its integration into WhatsApp’s encrypted backups feature, as well as a library for efficient zero knowledge proofs called Winterfell. Before joining Meta, Kevin completed his PhD in applied cryptography at Stanford University, advised by Dan Boneh.