G’day. My name is Ben Dowling, and I’m a Lecturer in Cybersecurity in the Security of Advanced Systems group at The University of Sheffield. I was previously a postdoc researcher in the Applied Cryptography Group at ETH Zurich, and a postdoctoral researcher and a research fellow at the Information Security Group at Royal Holloway, University of London. I finished my PhD at the Queensland University of Technology back in 2017 (Provable Security of Internet Protocols)!

If you’re interested in real-world cryptographic protocols and their security, we should chat!

Research Interests

Broadly speaking, my research interests focuses on the provable security of real-world cryptographic protocols. I am also interested in anticipating future threats, against stronger and better equipped attackers, so we can design and implement cryptographic protections before these threats become reality.

On a high level, I aim to achieve one of these goals during my research:

1. Assess the security of cryptographic protocols as they exist, and prove thesis constructions secure. This includes works such as A Formal Analysis of the Signal Key Establishment Protocol.
2. Influence standard bodies to modify the specifications with our proposed solution. This includes works such as A Cryptographic Analysis of the WireGuard Protocol.
3. Create new cryptographic protocols that improve upon state of the art, to create and influence future standards. This includes work such as Many a Mickle Makes a Muckle: A Framework for Provably Quantum-Secure Key Exchange.