Dr Fernando Virdia
Lecturer in Cyber Security
PhD
Academic and research departments
Surrey Centre for Cyber Security, Computer Science Research Centre, School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering.ResearchResearch interests
I am interested in investigating and developing secure and practical cryptographic primitives.
My main research topic is analysing the concrete security of cryptographic primitives and protocols. This includes estimating and experimentally verifying the cost of classical and quantum cryptanalytic attacks and constructing security proofs. Most of my work in this direction has focused on constructions claiming post-quantum security.
Indicators of esteem
Program Committee member:
- CRYPTO 2026
- PKC 2026
- IEEE S&P 2025 (Cycle 2)
- EUROCRYPT 2023
- LATINCRYPT: 2025, 2023
- AFRICACRYPT: 2025, 2024, 2022
- CT-RSA: 2022, 2021
- ISC 2024, CYSARM 2020
Research interests
I am interested in investigating and developing secure and practical cryptographic primitives.
My main research topic is analysing the concrete security of cryptographic primitives and protocols. This includes estimating and experimentally verifying the cost of classical and quantum cryptanalytic attacks and constructing security proofs. Most of my work in this direction has focused on constructions claiming post-quantum security.
Indicators of esteem
Program Committee member:
- CRYPTO 2026
- PKC 2026
- IEEE S&P 2025 (Cycle 2)
- EUROCRYPT 2023
- LATINCRYPT: 2025, 2023
- AFRICACRYPT: 2025, 2024, 2022
- CT-RSA: 2022, 2021
- ISC 2024, CYSARM 2020
Teaching
- 2025/26, COMM069 Digital Forensics, together with Ioana Boureanu
Publications
Highlights
- A. Karenin, E. Kirshanova, J. Nowakowski, E. W. Postlethwaite, L. N. Pulles, F. Virdia, P. Vié, Cool + Cruel = Dual, to appear at Eurocrypt 2026, eprint 2025/1002, code
- G. Fenzi, J. Gilcher, F. Virdia, Finding Bugs and Features Using Cryptographically-Informed Functional Testing, IACR TCHES, 2026(1) and at IACR RWC 2026, eprint 2024/1122, code, DOI
- N. Bindel, X. Bonnetain, M. Tiepelt, F. Virdia, Quantum Lattice Enumeration in Limited Depth, Crypto 2024, eprint 2023/1423, code, DOI
- M. Filić, K. G. Paterson, A. Unnikrishnan, F. Virdia, Adversarial Correctness and Privacy for Probabilistic Data Structures, ACM CCS 2022, eprint 2022/1186, code, DOI
- S. Jaques, M. Naehrig, M. Roetteler, F. Virdia, Implementing Grover oracles for quantum key search on AES and LowMC, Eurocrypt 2020, eprint 2019/1146, code, DOI
- JP. D’Anvers, M. Rossi, F. Virdia, (One) failure is not an option: Bootstrapping the search for failures in lattice-based encryption schemes, Eurocrypt 2020, eprint 2019/1399, code, DOI
- M. R. Albrecht, F. Göpfert, F. Virdia, and T. Wunderer, Revisiting the expected cost of solving uSVP and applications to LWE, Asiacrypt 2017, eprint 2017/815, code, DOI
Additional publications
- L. Glabush, P. Longa, M. Naehrig, C. Peikert, D. Stebila, F. Virdia, FrodoKEM: A CCA-Secure Learning With Errors Key Encapsulation Mechanism, IACR Communications in Cryptology, vol. 2, no. 3, 2025, eprint 2025/1861, code, DOI
- F. Virdia, Popping “R-propping”: breaking hardness assumptions for matrix groups over F_{2^8}, Mathematical Cryptology, 3(1), eprint 2023/1425, code, bibtex
- E. W. Postlethwaite, F. Virdia, On the Success Probability of Solving Unique SVP via BKZ, PKC 2021, eprint 2020/1308, code, DOI
- C. Costello, P. Longa, M. Naehrig, J. Renes, F. Virdia, Improved Classical Cryptanalysis of SIKE in Practice, PKC 2020, eprint 2019/298, code, DOI
- M. R. Albrecht, B. R. Curtis, A. Deo, A. Davidson, R. Player, E. W. Postlethwaite, F. Virdia, and T. Wunderer, Estimate All the {LWE, NTRU} Schemes!, SCN 2018, eprint 2018/331, website, code, DOI