Christina Garman is an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science at Purdue University. Her research interests focus largely on practical and applied cryptography, namely the design and analysis of real world cryptographic systems. She aims to make it easier to design and securely deploy new and complex cryptographic systems while preventing insecurities from occurring in such systems. As part of this, her work thus far has been on both building and deploying secure cryptographic systems, as well as analyzing existing systems. This includes past work on cryptographic automation and building "keyless CDNs", as well as exploring the weaknesses of RC4 in TLS and discovering flaws in Apple's iMessage, and her current work focusing on removing the "human element" from the deployment and analysis of cryptographic systems through the use of cryptographic automation and the development of tools. She received an NSF CAREER Award in 2021, and her work has received a best paper award at ACM CCS and been featured in numerous media, including The Washington Post, The New York Times, Wired, and The Economist. She is also one of the co-founders of Zcash, a privacy preserving cryptocurrency based on her work on Zerocash. She received her MS and Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University in Computer Science in 2013 and 2017 respectively, and a BS in Computer Science Engineering and a BA Mathematics, with a minor in Physics, from Bucknell University in 2011.
Ph.D., Computer Science
Advisors: Dr. Matthew D. Green
Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland
Completed December 2017
Master of Science in Engineering, Computer Science
Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland
Completed December 2013
Bachelor of Science, Computer Science and Engineering
Bachelor of Arts, Mathematics
Minor, Physics
Bucknell University, Lewisburg, PA
Completed May 2011
Cryptography has shown itself to be invaluable in everyday life, especially as more and more devices and interactions are moving to the online world. Whether it is browsing the web, making a purchase, or sending a message to a friend, cryptography is everywhere. Despite the fact that users (often unknowingly) rely on the security of systems that use cryptography, recent years have seen a number of serious vulnerabilities in the cryptographic pieces of systems, some with large consequences. These have been caused by various problems, including poor designs, difficulty of implementation, and use (or misuse) of (in)secure primitives.
My research interests focus on practical and applied cryptography, namely the design and analysis of real world cryptographic systems. I aim to make it easier to design and securely deploy new and complex cryptographic systems while preventing insecurities from occurring in such systems. While this currently involves a large amount of manual work, my goal is to instrument many of these processes through the use of cryptographic automation, including automating the discovery of cryptographic vulnerabilities and building tools to aid in the deployment of complex cryptography.
I am fortunate to be able to work with many great students on this research!
See my CV for more information.
Co-Organizer, NSF/SaTC Aspiring PI Workshop 2024
General Chair, Financial Cryptography and Data Security 2024
Vice Chair, USENIX Security 2023
Organizing Committee, GREPSEC VI, 2023
Virtual Environment Chair, USENIX Security 2021
Organizing Committee, GREPSEC V, 2021
Lightning Talks Chair, USENIX Security 2021
IEEE Security and Privacy 2024
Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PETS) 2024
Real World Cryptography (RWC) 2024
International Conference on Financial Cryptography and Data Security 2023
NDSS 2023
Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PETS) 2023
The Science of Blockchain Conference (SBC) 2023
International Conference on Financial Cryptography and Data Security 2022
Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PETS) 2022
USENIX Security 2022
USENIX Workshop on Offensive Technologies (WOOT) 2021
USENIX Security 2021
International Conference on Financial Cryptography and Data Security 2021
NDSS 2020
International Conference on Financial Cryptography and Data Security 2020
IEEE Security and Privacy 2020
Eurocrypt 2019
International Conference on Financial Cryptography and Data Security 2019
NDSS 2019
IEEE Security & Privacy on the Blockchain (IEEE S&B) 2019
ACM Advances in Financial Technologies (AFT) 2019
ACM CCS 2018
CRYPTO 2018
Workshop on Bitcoin Research 2018
International Conference on Financial Cryptography and Data Security 2018
Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PoPETs 2018.2) Reviewer
Workshop on Bitcoin Research 2017
Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PoPETs 2017.4) Reviewer
World Wide Web Conference (WWW) Security and Privacy Track 2016
Workshop on Bitcoin Research 2016
IEEE Security and Privacy (Student) 2016
USENIX Workshop on Offensive Technologies (WOOT) 2015
Workshop on Bitcoin Research 2015
Subreviews for PKC 2012, USENIX 2012, FC 2014, USENIX 2014, CCS 2014, FC 2015, USENIX 2015, USENIX 2016, CRYPTO 2016
zk-creds: a cryptographic library for designing anonymous credential systems in a flexible, issuer-agnostic, and efficient manner using general-purpose zero-knowledge proofs.
Phoenix: an extension of the Graphene libOS for Intel SGX hardware enclaves which introduces a new architectural primitive called conclaves: containers of enclaves as well as a "keyless CDN"
AutoGroup+: cryptographic tool for securely and automatically converting Type-I (symmetric) to Type-III (asymmetric) pairing schemes
Zerocash: privacy-preserving decentralized anonymous payment system
Zerocoin: cryptographic extension to Bitcoin that augments the protocol to allow for fully anonymous currency transactions
Charm: cryptographic library written in Python to facilitate intuitive, modular, and reusable development and analysis of cryptographic schemes and protocols