For more than a decade, security researchers have been focusing on the sorry state of public-key
infrastructure on the internet, highlighting the widespread prevalence of broken, weak, and vulnerable
cryptographic keys. The existence of such keys has significant security implications, including the fact
that weaknesses in the keys allow for quicker factorization, enabling one to compute the corresponding
private keys more efficiently and undermining communication security. Misconfigurations in
cryptographic algorithms and software library implementation decisions can result in identifiable patterns
in generated keys, revealing information about the key's origin, such as the originating library, its specific
version, and the operating system used. Finally, inadequate randomness in key generation can result in the
same key being used for multiple hosts. In this talk, I will explore RSA public key reuse within the PKI
ecosystem and its implications.
Dr. Natalia Stakhanova is the Canada Research Chair in Security and Privacy.
Associate Professor at the University of Saskatchewan, Canada. She is a former NB
Innovation Research Chair in Cybersecurity at the University of New Brunswick. Her
work revolves around building secure systems. Dr. Stakhanova has published over 60
publications in the areas of network security, software protection, and code attribution.
She holds 4 patents in the field of computer security. Dr. Stakhanova is a member of
the Canadian Cross-Cultural Roundtable on Security (CCRS), the group that provides
advice to the Minister of Public Safety Canada and the Minister of Justice and
Attorney General of Canada concerning matters of national security and public safety.
She serves as an Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure
Computing (TDSC), and Guest Editor for IEEE Transactions on Network and Service
Management (IEEE TNSM). Dr. Stakhanova is the recipient of numerous recognitions
and awards, including the Top 20 Women in Cybersecurity, the CyberNB Recognition
Award, the McCain Young Scholar Award, and the Anita Borg Institute Faculty
Award. She is a strong advocate of Women in IT and co-founder of CyberLaunch
Academy, an initiative that aims to promote science and technology among children.
