Dr. Nilanjan Datta

Associate Professor, IAI TCG CREST

Research and Education


I work in the field of symmetric key cryptography with a special interest in the design and analysis of symmetric ciphers. My research interest primarily includes the design and analysis of authenticated encryption, lightweight cryptography, provable security, security analysis of symmetric modes, searchable encryption, leakage resilience cryptography, etc. I am also interested in the cryptanalysis of primitives and symmetric quantum algorithms.

I obtained my PhD and post-graduation in Computer Science from Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata. I am extremely privileged to work under the supervision of Prof. Mridul Nandi. After PhD, I was an Institute Post Doctoral Fellow in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, IIT Kharagpur for two years, and Lecturer cum Post Doctoral Fellow at R. C. Bose Centre for Cryptology and Security, Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata for one and a half years. During my doctoral tenure, I have spent two months in NTT Lab, Japan and two months in Fujitsu Laboratories of America for research collaboration.


Achievements


I am one of the co-designers of the misuse resistant authenticated encryption mode ELmD, which is currently named COLM after merging with COPA. The design is selected as the winner in “Defense in Depth” category of the CAESAR competition. This work is also invited for publication of a special issue in the Journal of Cryptology. I am a co-designer of the sponge based authenticated cipher Photon Beetle, which is one of the finalists of the ongoing NIST Lightweight Competition. I am also a co-designer of all the three finalists of Lightweight Cipher Design Challenge 2020 organized by National CoE, the joint initiative of the Data security council of India (DSCI) and the Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY). 

Professional Activities

  • Assistant Secretary of Cryptology Research Society of India

  • Web co-chairs of INDOCRYPT 2023

  • Organizing co-chairs of INDOCRYPT 2022

  • RFAC co-ordinator at IAI, TCG CREST.

  • Reviewer for IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, Designs, Code and Cryptography, IET Information Security, INDOCRYPT (2019, 2021, 2022, 2023), Cryptography and Communications Discrete Structures, Boolean Functions and Sequences – CCDS, IET, AMC, International Conference on Information Security and Cryptology – ICISC, 2017.

  • Organizing Committee Member for ASK 2018, INDOCRYPT (2022, 2016, 2012).

 

Publications


This is a list of important publications. Please refer to my DBLP for the full list of publications.

  • Nilanjan DattaShreya DeyAvijit DuttaSougata Mandal: Cascading Four Round LRW1 is Beyond Birthday Bound Secure. IACR Trans. Symmetric Cryptol. 2023(4): 365-390 (2023)
  • Nilanjan Datta, Avijit Dutta, Mridul Nandi, Suprita Talnikar: Tight Multi-User Security Bound of DbHtS. IACR Trans. Symmetric Cryptol. 2023(1): 192-223 (2023)
  • Nilanjan Datta, Avijit Dutta, Eik List, Sougata Mandal: On the Security of Triplex- and Multiplex-type Constructions with Smaller Tweaks. INDOCRYPT 2023
  • Nilanjan Datta, Avijit Dutta, Kushankur Dutta: Improved Security Bound of (E/D)WCDM. IACR Trans. Symmetric Cryptol. 2021(4): 138-176 (2021)
  • Avik ChakrabortiNilanjan DattaAshwin JhaCuauhtemoc Mancillas-LópezMridul Nandi: tHyENA: Making HyENA Even Smaller. INDOCRYPT 2021: 26-48
  • Avik Chakraborti, Nilanjan Datta, Ashwin JhaCuauhtemoc Mancillas-LópezMridul NandiYu Sasaki: Elastic-Tweak: A Framework for Short Tweak Tweakable Block Cipher. INDOCRYPT 2021: 114-137
  • Avik Chakraborti, Nilanjan Datta, Ashwin Jha, Cuauhtemoc Mancillas-Lopez, Mridul Nandi, Yu Sasaki, ESTATE: A Lightweight and Low Energy Authenticated Encryption Mode. IACR Trans. Symmetric Cryptol. 2020(S1): 350-389 (2020)
  • Avik Chakraborti, Nilanjan Datta, Ashwin Jha, Snehal Mitragotri, Mridul Nandi, From Combined to Hybrid: Making Feedback-based AE even Smaller. IACR Trans. Symmetric Cryptol. 2020(S1): 417-445 (2020)
  • Sikhar Patranabis, Nilanjan Datta, Dirmanto Jap, Jakub Breier, Shivam Bhasin, Debdeep Mukhopadhyay, SCADFA: Combined SCA+DFA Attacks on Block Ciphers with Practical Validations, IEEE Trans. Computers 68(10): 1498-1510 (2019)
  • Donghoon Chang, Nilanjan Datta, Avijit Dutta, Bart Mennink, Mridul Nandi, Somitra Sanadhya, Ferdinand Sibleyras: Release of Unverified Plaintext: Tight Unified Model and Application to ANYDAE. IACR Trans. Symmetric Cryptol. 2019(4): 119-146 (2019)
  • Avik Chakraborti, Nilanjan Datta, Mridul Nandi, Kan Yasuda, Beetle Family of Lightweight and Secure Authenticated Encryption Ciphers. IACR Trans. Cryptogr. Hardw. Embed. Syst. 2018(2): 218-241 (2018)
  • Nilanjan Datta, Avijit Dutta, Mridul Nandi, Goutam Paul: Double-block Hash-then-Sum: A Paradigm for Constructing BBB Secure PRF. IACR Trans. Symmetric Cryptol. 2018(3): 36-92 (2018)
  • Nilanjan Datta, Avijit Dutta, Mridul Nandi, Kan Yasuda: Encrypt or Decrypt? To Make a Single-Key Beyond Birthday Secure Nonce-Based MAC. CRYPTO (1) 2018: 631-661
  • Ritam Bhaumik, Nilanjan Datta, Avijit Dutta, Nicky Mouha, Mridul Nandi: The Iterated Random Function Problem. ASIACRYPT (2) 2017: 667-697
  • Lilian Bossuet, Nilanjan Datta, Cuauhtemoc Mancillas-López, Mridul Nandi: ELmD: A Pipelineable Authenticated Encryption and Its Hardware Implementation. IEEE Trans. Computers 65(11): 3318-3331 (2016)
  • Avik Chakraborti, Nilanjan Datta, Mridul Nandi: INT-RUP Analysis of Block-cipher Based Authenticated Encryption Schemes. CT-RSA 2016: 39-54

Contact: nilanjan.datta@tcgcrest.org / 📞 79807 20012