Dr. Kenneth Paterson

Professor, ETH Zürich, Switzerland

Bio : Dr. Kenneth Paterson ob­tained a B.Sc. in 1990 from the Uni­ver­sity of Glas­gow and a Ph.D. from the Uni­ver­sity of Lon­don in 1993, both in Math­em­at­ics. He was then a Royal So­ci­ety Fel­low at the In­sti­tute for Sig­nal and In­form­a­tion Pro­cessing at the Swiss Fed­eral In­sti­tute of Tech­no­logy, Zurich, from 1993 to 1994. After that, he was a Lloyd’s of Lon­don Ter­cen­ten­ary Found­a­tion Re­search Fel­low at Royal Hol­lo­way, Uni­ver­sity of Lon­don from 1994 to 1996.

In 1996, he joined Hewlett-​Packard Labor­at­or­ies Bris­tol, be­com­ing a pro­ject man­ager in 1999.

He then joined the In­form­a­tion Se­cur­ity Group at Royal Hol­lo­way in 2001, be­com­ing a Reader in 2002 and Pro­fessor in 2004. From March 2010 to May 2015, he was an EPSRC Lead­er­ship Fel­low work­ing on a pro­ject en­titled Cryp­to­graphy: Bridging The­ory and Prac­tice. In May 2015, he re­ver­ted to be­ing a Pro­fessor of In­form­a­tion Se­cur­ity.

In April 2019, he joined the De­part­ment of Com­puter Sci­ence at ETH Zurich. Since 1 Janu­ary 2021, he have held the role of As­so­ci­ate De­part­ment Head. In ad­di­tion, he is dir­ector of the CAS/DAS in Cy­ber Se­cur­ity and the Mas­ters pro­gramme in Cy­ber Se­cur­ity.
His re­search over the last two dec­ades has mostly been in the area of Cryp­to­graphy, with a strong em­phasis be­ing on the ana­lysis of de­ployed cryp­to­graphic sys­tems and the de­vel­op­ment of prov­ably se­cure solu­tions to real-​world cryp­to­graphic prob­lems. He co-​founded the Real World Cryp­to­graphy series of work­shops to sup­port the de­vel­op­ment of this broad area and to strengthen the links between aca­demia and in­dustry. From 2014 to 2019, he was co-​chair of the IRTF’s re­search group on Cryp­to­graphy, CFRG. This group is work­ing to provide ex­pert ad­vice to the IETF in an ef­fort to strengthen the In­ter­net’s core se­cur­ity pro­to­cols.

His re­search on the se­cur­ity of TLS (the Lucky 13 at­tack on CBC-​mode en­cryp­tion in TLS and at­tacks on RC4) re­ceived sig­ni­fic­ant me­dia at­ten­tion, helped to drive the wide­spread ad­op­tion of TLS 1.2 with its sup­port for mod­ern en­cryp­tion schemes, and was an im­port­ant factor in the TLS Work­ing Group’s de­cision to aban­don leg­acy en­cryp­tion mech­an­isms in TLS 1.3.

He is lucky to have been the re­cip­i­ent of sev­eral prizes and awards for my re­search. These in­clude a Google Dis­tin­guished Pa­per Award for his joint work with Nad­hem Al­Fardan present­ing plain­text re­cov­ery at­tacks against DTLS pub­lished at NDSS 2012; an Ap­plied Net­work­ing Re­search Prize from the IRTF for his work with Nad­hem Al­Fardan on the Lucky 13 at­tack; and an Award for Out­stand­ing Re­search in Pri­vacy En­han­cing Tech­no­lo­gies for his work with Mi­hir Bel­lare and Phil Rogaway on the Se­cur­ity of sym­met­ric en­cryp­tion against mass sur­veil­lance pub­lished at CRYPTO 2014. My work with Mar­tin Al­brecht, Jean Paul De­g­ab­ri­ele and Torben Hansen on sym­met­ric en­cryp­tion in SSH won a best pa­per award at ACM CCS 2016. In 2018, his work won best pa­per awards at CHES and IMC.

Other ca­reer high­lights in­clude be­ing se­lec­ted as Pro­gramme Chair for EURO­CRYPT 2011, be­ing an in­vited speaker at ASIAC­RYPT 2014, and be­ing editor-​in-chief of the Journal of Crypto­logy from 2017 to 2020. He was made a fel­low of the IACR in 2017.