Khandaker Md. Al-Amin

Cryptographer in Berlin. PhD in pairing-based cryptography, then three years shipping elliptic-curve homomorphic encryption and secure multi-party computation. Post-quantum cryptography is where I am taking that next.

Recent writing

  • Lattices, Part 3: Making Bad Arrows Good

    If short arrows are so much better than long ones, why not just shorten them? You can, and the method is one you already learned in school.

    9 min read

  • Lattices, Part 2: Good Basis, Bad Basis

    Finding the nearest dot in a grid is easy with the right description of that grid and hopeless with the wrong one. That gap is the trapdoor lattice cryptography is built on.

    10 min read

  • Lattices, Part 1: A Grid of Dots

    What a lattice is, why one lattice has infinitely many bases, and why that single fact is where lattice cryptography starts.

    14 min read

All writing →

Selected research

  • A Study of Efficient Pairing Computation Algorithm Using KSS Curves

    Ph.D. dissertation, Okayama University, 2019

  • Efficient Optimal Ate Pairing at 128-Bit Security Level

    Progress in Cryptology - INDOCRYPT 2017, Springer LNCS, December 2017, pp. 186–205

    doi:10.1007/978-3-319-71667-1_10

  • An Improvement of Scalar Multiplication by Skew Frobenius Map with Multi-Scalar Multiplication for KSS Curve

    IEICE Transactions on Fundamentals E100.A(9), 2017, pp. 1838–1845

    doi:10.1587/transfun.E100.A.1838

All publications →

Code

  • ELiPS

    Efficient library for pairing-based cryptography on BN and BLS curves.

    2016–2019Live demoGitHub

  • BLS signatures + aggregation demo

    Interactive BLS short signatures running the Optimal-Ate pairing in the browser via WebAssembly.

    2025Live demoGitHub

  • DataArmor Gate DB

    Database proxy that runs SQL over encrypted data without giving the server the key.

    2020–2023Product page

All projects →

What I work on

Cryptography & secure computing

Work I have actually done. Doctoral research, and three years building these into shipping systems.

  • Pairing-based cryptography and elliptic curves (KSS, BN, BLS families)
  • Homomorphic encryption: lifted ElGamal on BLS curves, running SQL queries over encrypted data
  • Secure multi-party computation and private set intersection
  • Privacy-preserving machine learning
  • Encrypted-database and secure-computing product engineering
  • Implementation in Rust and C, with an eye on constant-time behavior

Security engineering & compliance

My current day-to-day at ITK Engineering.

  • EU Cyber Resilience Act readiness and conformity assessment routes
  • SBOM management: SPDX, CycloneDX, provenance and signing in CI/CD
  • Coordinated vulnerability disclosure (ISO/IEC 29147, 30111) and PSIRT operating models
  • Incident response readiness aligned with NIST SP 800-61
  • Automotive cybersecurity: ISO/SAE 21434 TARA, UN R155, secure boot, HSM integration

Where I am taking this next

Self-directed rather than paid work, and written up as I go.

  • Lattice cryptography from LWE to Ring-LWE and the BFV scheme, worked through in my Computing on Secrets article
  • Post-quantum standards in practice: ML-KEM and ML-DSA, and what migration costs at the protocol layer
  • Hybrid key exchange and the transition problem for long-lived systems
  • Zero-knowledge proof systems and the pairing-based components I already know well

Computing on Secrets, a ground-up account of LWE →

Elsewhere