Symbiont Hires Cryptographer Who Broke SHA-1

Smart contracts and blockchain platform Symbiont has recently hired the distinguished cryptographer Dr. Lisa Yin as its chief security officer and chief cryptographer. Dr. Yin plans to utilize her expertise to help the firm advance the Symbiont platform’s security solutions.

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Symbiont Hires Famous Cryptographer Who Broke SHA-1 Hash Standard

Symbiont is a blockchain-based company that specializes in smart contract securities and distributed ledger applications. The startup was founded in 2015 by Adam Krellenstein, Mark Smith, Evan Wagner, and Robby Dermody. The company’s platform has been tested by Credit Suisse and fifteen other financial institutions experimenting with smart loans. The hiring of the renowned cryptographer, Dr. Lisa Yin, adds to the startup’s ongoing expansion.

“Cryptography and computer security are extremely fast-moving fields, so it is imperative to be able to take full advantage of the latest developments, to anticipate and proactively address new forms of attacks,” said Adam Krellenstein, CTO and co-founder of Symbiont. “Lisa’s deep knowledge in cryptography and her broad connections to the research community and the industry will allow us to leverage a wide spectrum of expertise in the fields.”

Dr. Yin has over twenty years’ experience concerning cryptography and security technologies. Additionally, the cryptographer is well known for her participation in breaking the U.S. government’s encryption standard SHA-1. The cryptographic hash function SHA-1 was created by the NSA and is no longer secure due to three researchers findings including Dr. Yin. Additionally, Dr. Yin was the Chief Editor of IEEE P1363, one of the first public key cryptography standards.

Many Financial Partners

Currently, Symbiont has been working on a multi-party distributed ledger pilot that examines syndicated loans. Back in September the firm, partnered with Credit Suisse, completed a few milestones alongside Ipreo, and with R3 collaboration. In June the Europe-based companies Allianz and Nephila Capital also completed a pilot with Symbiont’s platform.

Alongside these trials, the company is working with the U.S. state of Delaware and its governor Jack Markell. The state’s government hopes to use the platform to secure and digitize state records. Symbiont architecture will store Delaware public archives on its distributed ledger platform. Furthermore, the startup has accumulated US$7 million in venture capital from five investors since its inception. Dr. Yin believes the company has progressed quite well with its current blockchain infrastructure.

“The Symbiont team has already solved hard problems that give its platform a competitive edge in terms of both security and performance,” said Dr. Yin. “I am very excited to join the team, and I look forward to keeping Symbiont ahead of the curve on developments in cryptography, which is a critical building block for distributed ledger technology.”

While Many Blockchain Trials Experiment the Original Public Blockchain Just Works

The startup and a large swathe of legacy financial incumbents believe blockchain will lower transaction costs, speed up automation, and reduce fraud with cryptographic security. Symbiont’s hiring of Dr. Yin shows the company is quite serious about progressing forward in this technological race. Many distributed ledger projects, trials, and tests are taking place while the original bitcoin blockchain continues to improve. It will be interesting to see if these blockchain concepts remain prominent over the next few years and what they will mean to the public blockchain landscape.

What do you think about Symbiont hiring cryptographer Dr. Lisa Yin? Let us know in the comments below.

Images courtesy of Shutterstock, Symbiont, and Slashdot. 

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