Algebraic Resilience
Research-led cryptographic engineering for high-stakes digital infrastructure.
Astarisc is a research-led consultancy specializing in the formal design and cryptanalytic evaluation of everything from core primitives to complex integrated protocols. Founded by Dr. Alan Szepieniec, the firm applies the mathematical rigor necessary to ensure cryptographic durability against both classical adversaries and the emerging threat of quantum computation. We provide the technical foundation for systems that must remain secure for decades to come.
Core Activities
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Design of Simple Primitives and Complex Architectures Engineering bespoke cryptographic components -- from hash functions and signatures to Multi-Party Computation (MPC) and Layer-1 blockchain protocols. We bridge the gap between abstract security proofs and high-performance implementations.
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Cryptanalysis The discovery and development of novel attack algorithms to break cryptographic primitives and protocols. We investigate mathematical vulnerabilities across diverse adversarial models and computational cost models including parallelism, memory bottlenecks, and quantum resources.
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Provable Security Deriving formal mathematical guarantees for cryptographic designs. By reducing security to well-studied hardness assumptions, we provide the rigorous foundations necessary to determine optimal parameter selection and ensure institutional-grade trustworthiness.
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Audit & Formal Evaluation Providing rigorous mathematical scrutiny of third-party designs. Our evaluations result in high-assurance Audit Reports that investigate the validity of security claims, surfacing either formal verification of safety or concrete cryptanalytic findings.
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Future-Proofing Hardening infrastructure for long-term viability against evolving threats. This includes navigating the transition to Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) and evaluating the robustness of new hardness assumptions against potential algorithmic breakthroughs.
Specializations
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Zero-Knowledge and Succinct-Verifier Proof Systems Modern proof systems enable trivial devices to verify immense computations over secret data. Achieving both asymptotic and concrete efficiency requires a seamless bridge between information-theoretic abstractions (coding theory) and the algebra of cryptographic primitives. Peak performance is found in tailored arithmetization: optimizing the mathematical representation of a specific computation beyond the limits of generic frameworks.
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Post-Quantum Cryptography Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) addresses the threat of quantum computation using algorithms deployable on classical hardware. It is an evolving frontier where security margins depend on the evolving understanding of hardness of problems in the face of novel algorithmic techniques. Beyond the high-visibility NIST selections, the broader corpus of competition submissions provides a library of design strategies to address unique performance or architectural constraints.
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Symmetric Constructions Established primitives like AES and SHA-2 often fail to provide peak performance in specialized environments, necessitating new designs tailored to specific constraints. This development cycle requires balancing efficiency against a diverse landscape of statistical, algebraic, and structural attacks. A robust construction must offer a clear security margin against these vectors while optimizing for the target's underlying computational model.
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Protocols Cryptographic protocols -- from MPC and threshold signatures to cross-chain atomic swaps and multi-hop locks -- demand formal security models that account for sophisticated adversarial goals, such as computational subversion or unauthorized asset transfer. Beyond defining these objectives, the primary challenge lies in formalizing proofs showing that they are unattainable. A security proof Universal Composability (UC) framework guarantees security across arbitrary compositions -- parallel, sequential, or interactive -- providing the rigorous foundation necessary for protocols to operate in the wild.