Our mission is to build resilient public infrastructure for the world’s data.
The theme of our work is decentralization: Inspired by peer-to-peer networks and cryptocurrencies, we build distributed systems for broad applications, that resist attacks while minimizing their reliance on trusted external parties. Our approach is multidisciplinary, combining methods from distributed computing, cryptography, programming languages, network measurement, and mechanism design.
News
- Three papers accepted at FC 2019: TxProbe, Sprites and I can’t believe It’s not Stake!
- DSL awarded an NSF grant for automated support for writing high assurance smart contracts. [NSF]
- Xiaoyao Qian submitted his M.S thesis in Spring 2018 [Print]
- Surya Bakshi completed and deposited his M.S. ECE thesis in Spring 2018.
- Check out our participation in the Zcash “Powers of Tau” ceremony using radioactive toxic waste from Chernobyl! [Article 1], [Article 2]
- Tom’s paper Reactive redundancy for data destruction protection (R2D2) has been accepted for publication to Computers & Security
We support and learn from cutting-edge cryptocurrencies (like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Zcash, and more)
- Fake Stake attacks on chain based Proof-of-Stake currencies [paper] [Github] (Blog in English, Russian translation, Chinese translation)
- Cryptocurrency Network Measurement
- Upcoming MOOC: Smart Contract Security (Spring 2019)
- Previous courses: Cryptocurrency Security (Fall 2016) – ECE/CS 598 AM: Cryptocurrency Security, Applied Cryptography (Fall 2018) ECE/CS 498 AM: Applied Cryptography
- Member of the Initiative for Cryptocurrencies and Contracts (IC3)
- Smart contract security – (Video: Ethereum isn’t Turing Complete and it doesn’t matter anyway) [Ethereum Lab] [Blog posts on hackingdistributed]
- Allofthecoins – docker infrastructure for running cryptocurrencies in sandboxes [github]
- Shadow Bitcoin – simulation framework for cryptocurrency networks [github] [paper]
We create Blockchain technology. Many industries, including finance, healthcare, and more, would benefit from more automation and more information sharing, but security concerns remain an obstacle. The “Blockchain” movement is an industry-wide effort to solve this problem by building new platforms for shared data, with security designed-in from the start. We contribute by making fundamental advances that combine techniques from fault tolerant and dependable/reliable systems, cryptography, and programming languages.
- HoneyBadgerBFT: an improved fault tolerant consensus protocol
- HoneyBadgerMPC: Confidentiality for Consortium Blockchains
Faculty:
- Asst. Prof. Andrew Miller
Students:
- Surya Bakshi (Ph.D., ECE)
- Kevin Liao (Ph.D., CS)
- Hanyun Xu (M.S., CS)
- Tom Yurek (Ph.D., CS)
- Yunqi Li (Ph.D., ECE)
- Samarth Kulshreshtha (M.S., CS)
- Rahul Mahadev (M.S., CS)
- Sanket Kanjalkar (M.S. CS)
- Joseph Kuo (Undergrad, CS)
Alumni:
- Xiaoyao Qian (Masters, CS) Now at NADGrid
- Chris Cordi (Masters, CS) Now at Sandia
- Kevin Lee (Undergrad, ECE) Now a Ph.D. student at Princeton
- Abhiram Kothapalli (Undergrad, CS) Now a Ph.D. student at CMU
- Sergi Delgado Segura (visitor) Postdoc at University College London
- Patrick McCorry (visitor) Lecturer at King’s College London
Decentralized Systems Lab is part of Security and Privacy Research @ Illinois (SPR@I).
