Left: Kim Young-beom, Ph.D. candidate / Right: Professor Seo Seok-chung

Kim Young-beom, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Financial Information Security at Kookmin University's Cryptography and Security Engineering Research Laboratory (CSE, advised by Professor Seo Seok-chung), has been selected as an outstanding paper presenter at The 20th ACM ASIA Conference on Computer and Communications Security (AsiaCCS 2025, Issue 1), an outstanding academic conference selected by BK21 Plus, and The annual Conference on Cryptographic Hardware and Embedded Systems (CHES 2025, Issue 1), the top-tier academic conference in the field of cryptographic implementation.

Both studies originated from the awareness that, as quantum computers become practical, the global computing environment may transition to quantum-resistant cryptography, potentially making IoT devices at the network edge vulnerable to new security threats. In particular, they emphasized the necessity of achieving quantum security across all devices in IoT environments to prevent sensitive commands and observations from being exposed to attackers, especially in resource-constrained devices operating at the boundaries of distributed systems.

Based on this research direction, the paper titled “An Optimized Instantiation of Post-Quantum MQTT Protocol on 8-bit AVR Sensor Nodes” was published in the AsiaCCS conference. The paper proposes a lightweight MQTT protocol (KEM-MQTT) designed to achieve quantum security even in extremely resource-constrained 8-bit AVR sensor node environments, and demonstrates for the first time the practical applicability of PQC on low-spec devices. This research presents an important milestone in the development of next-generation IoT security systems by realizing quantum security based on low-end devices.

Additionally, through over a year of joint research with the Max Planck Institute abroad, a paper titled “Multiplying Polynomials without Powerful Multiplication Instructions” was published in the CHES conference. This paper establishes a new implementation methodology for modular multiplication, one of the core operations of quantum-resistant cryptography, on small embedded devices, and proposes a method to efficiently perform polynomial multiplication even in environments without high-performance multiplication instructions.

The Cryptography and Security Engineering Laboratory (CSE) at Kookmin University, led by Professor Seok-Chung Seo, focuses on optimizing PQC in both software and hardware environments and migrating security protocols, and plans to continue expanding its implementation and validation research to advance the practical application of quantum-resistant cryptography.