Dr. Au, Allen M.H.

BEng, MPhil CUHK; PhD Wollongong
Honorary Professor

Fax: (+852) 2559 8447
Email: allenau [AT] cs [DOT] hku [DOT] hk

Dr. Man Ho Allen Au is an honorary professor of the Department of Computer Science in the University of Hong Kong (HKU). He received his BEng and MPhil degrees from the Department of Information Engineering of the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2003 and 2005 respectively. He then obtained his PhD from the School of Computer Science and Software Engineering of the University of Wollongong in 2009. Before joining HKU, he was an associate professor in the Department of Computing of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. His research interests include applied cryptography, information security, blockchain technology, and related industrial applications. Dr. Au has published over 170 refereed papers in top journals and conferences, including CRYPTO, ASIACRYPT, IEEE S&P, ACM CCS, ACM SIGMOD, NDSS, IEEE TIFS, TC, TKDE, etc.  He is a recipient of the 2009 PET runner-up award for outstanding research in privacy enhancing technologies.

Dr. Au’s research has generated significant social and economic impact. In the past 5 years, he has, as the principal investigator, attracted over 25 million HKD in research and high-level consultancy projects. His digital signature technology has been adopted by the Hyperledger Fabric project, the most popular blockchain infrastructure supported by big industry players like IBM, Intel and SAP. His analysis on privacy, and design of new privacy-preserving techniques for confidential transactions, has been discussed and reported by leading privacy-friendly currencies such as Monero. Dr. Au is also an expert member of the China delegation of ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 27 working group 2 - Cryptography and security mechanisms and a committee member of the Hong Kong Blockchain Society R&D division.

Research Interests

Information security, applied cryptography, blockchain technology, and related applications

Selected Publications

• Rupeng Yang, Zuoxia Yu, Man Ho Au and Willy Susilo. Public-Key Watermarking Schemes for Pseudorandom Functions. The 42nd Annual International Cryptology Conference (CRYPTO 2022) (2022)
• Haiyang Xue, Man Ho Au, Xiang Xie, Tsz Hon Yuen and Handong Cui. Efficient Online-friendly Two-Party ECDSA Signature. The ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS 2021) (2021)
• Tsz Hon Yuen, Muhammed F. Esgin, Joseph K. Liu, Man Ho Au and Zhimin Ding. DualRing: Generic Construction of Ring Signatures with Efficient Instantiations. The 41st Annual International Cryptology Conference (CRYPTO 2021) (2021)
• Ji Qi, Xusheng Chen, Yunpeng Jiang, Jianyu Jiang, Tianxiang Shen, Shixiong Zhao, Sen Wang, Gong Zhang, Li Chen, Man Ho Au and Heming Cui. BIDL: A High-throughput, Low-latency Permissioned Blockchain Framework for Datacenter Networks. The 28th ACM Symposium on Operating Systems Principles (SOSP 2021) (2021)
• Lei Xue, Hao Zhou, Xiapu Luo, Yijin Zhou, Yang Shi, Guofei Gu, Fengwei Zhang and Man Ho Au. Happer: Unpacking Android Apps via a Hardware-Assisted Approach. The 42nd IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (IEEE S&P 2021) (2021)
• Rupeng Yang, Junzuo Lai, Zhengan Huang, Man Ho Au, Qiuliang Xu and Willy Susilo. Possibility and Impossibility Results for Receiver Selective Opening Secure PKE in the Multi-Challenge Setting. The 26th Annual International Conference on the Theory and Application of Cryptology and Information Security (ASIACRYPT 2020)
• Rupeng Yang, Man Ho Au, Zuoxia Yu and Qiuliang Xu. Collusion Resistant Watermarkable PRFs from Standard Assumptions. The 40th Annual International Cryptology Conference (CRYPTO 2020) (2020)
• Xiu Xu, Haiyang Xue, Kunpeng Wang, Man Ho Au and Song Tian. Strongly Secure Authenticated Key Exchange from Supersingular Isogenies. The 25th Annual International Conference on the Theory and Application of Cryptology and Information Security (ASIACRYPT 2019), pages 178-308 (2019)
• Rupeng Yang, Man Ho Au, Junzuo Lai, Qiuliang Xu and Zuoxia Yu. Collusion Resistant Watermarking Schemes for Cryptographic Functionalities. The 25th Annual International Conference on the Theory and Application of Cryptology and Information Security (ASIACRYPT 2019), pages 371-398 (2019)
• Rupeng Yang, Man Ho Au, Zhenfei Zhang, Qiuliang Xu, Zuoxia Yu and William Whyte. Efficient Lattice-Based Zero-Knowledge Arguments with Standard Soundness: Construction and Applications. Proceedings of the 39th Annual International Cryptology Conference (CRYPTO 2019), pages 147-175 (2019)
• Cheng Xu, Jianliang Xu, Haibo Hu and Man Ho Au. When Query Authentication Meets Fine-Grained Access Control: A Zero-Knowledge Approach. Proceedings of the 2018 International Conference on Management of Data (SIGMOD 2018), pages 147-162 (2018)
• Yong Yu, Man Ho Au, Giuseppe Ateniese, Xinyi Huang, Willy Susilo, Yuanshun Dai and Geyong Min. Identity-Based Remote Data Integrity Checking with Perfect Data Privacy Preserving for Cloud Storage. IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security 12(4): 767-778 (2017)
• Man Ho Au, Joseph K. Liu, Willy Susilo and Jianying Zhou. Realizing Fully Secure Unrestricted ID-based Ring Signature in the Standard Model Based on HIBE. IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security 8(12): 1909-1922 (2013)
• Man Ho Au and Apu Kapadia. PERM: Practical Reputation Based Blacklisting without TTPs. Proceedings of the 19th ACM conference on Computer and communications security (CCS 2012), pages 929-940, ACM (2012)
• Man Ho Au, Apu Kapadia, and Willy Susilo. BLACR: TTP-Free Blacklistable Anonymous Credentials with Reputation. Proceedings of the 19th Annual Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS 2012) (2012)
• Patrick P. Tsang, Man Ho Au, Apu Kapadia and Sean W. Smith. PEREA: Towards Practical TTP-Free Revocation in Anonymous Authentication. Proceedings of the 15th ACM conference on Computer and communications security (CCS 2008), pages 333-344, ACM (2008)
• Man Ho Au, Yi Mu, Jing Chen, Duncan S. Wong, Joseph K. Liu and Guomin Yang. Malicious KGC Attacks in Certificateless Cryptography. Proceedings of the 2nd ACM Symposium on Information, Computer and Communications Security (ASIACCS 2007), pages 302-311, ACM (2007)
• Patrick P. Tsang, Man Ho Au, Apu Kapadia and Sean W. Smith. Blacklistable Anonymous Credentials: Blocking Misbehaving Users without TTPs. Proceedings of the 14th ACM conference on Computer and communications security (CCS 2007), pages 72-81, ACM (2007)

Recent Research Grants

• 2021 New Frontiers of Lattice-Based Cryptography [RGC GRF]
• 2021 Secure Computation over Large-Scale Encrypted Data for Statistical Analysis [ITF Seed]
• 2021 A Secure and Privacy-Preserving Data Sharing Platform over Public Blockchain with Traitor Tracing [ITF Platform]
• 2020 Practical Post-Quantum Zero-Knowledge Proofs [RGC GRF]       
• 2020 抗量子隐私保护密码方案的关键技术研究 (NSFC)
• 2019 Blockchain for Logistics – Connecting Physical Goods with their Digital Identifiers (ITF PRP)
• 2018 Anonymous Digital Signatures in the Post-Quantum Era: Secure and Efficient Constructions (ITF Seed)
• 2018 Accountable Privacy-Preserving Authentications: New Constructions from Post-Quantum Cryptography (RGC GRF ECS)   
• 2017 Blockchain-Based Food and Drug Counterfeit Detection and Regulatory System (ITF UICP)
• 2017 发布/订阅服务中保护用户隐私与可证明安全密码方案的关键技术研究 (NSFC ECS)