Our graduate and undergraduate students are helping to lead the next steps in cybersecurity in such critical areas as blockchain – before they graduate.

Kigen Fukuda is a first-year M.S. student in computer science at Virginia Tech and working at the Commonwealth Cyber Initiative Hub in Arlington, Va. as a graduate research assistant. Shin’ichiro Matsuo, a CCI research professor well known for his blockchain expertise, is his advisor.

Representatives from top national and international companies presented at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Crypto-Agility Workshop last month. “During the two-day workshop, Virginia Tech/CCI was the only American university to present, and Kigen's presentation was the sole contribution from a university,” Matsuo said. “As a master's student at CCI, this achievement is a significant milestone for our institution.”

Fukuda said he wants to contribute to information technology governance, especially in blockchain. He graduated with a Bachelor of Engineering from Waseda University in Japan, majoring in computer science and engineering.

Fukuda explained more about what crypto-agility means for blockchain:

Blockchain is designed to be persistent and immutable, ensuring the security and value of your crypto assets, including bitcoins. Blockchain’s underlying cryptographic primitives are fundamental building blocks, which includes hash functions used for data fingerprinting and the Digital Signature Algorithm that ensures the authenticity of the transactions. Important as they are, these foundations have a limited lifespan and need to be updated.

Crypto-agility is the ability to replace primitives, an essential task to maintain the security of blockchain, including bitcoins and other crypto assets, decades from now. Our presentation highlighted the difficulties in achieving crypto-agility for blockchain and outlined the required steps and discussions to realize it.

Watch his presentation.

Contact: Michele McDonald