Wang Xiaoyun (; born 1966) is a Chinese

cryptographer Cryptography, or cryptology (from grc, , translit=kryptós "hidden, secret"; and ''graphein'', "to write", or ''-logia'', "study", respectively), is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of adver ...

, mathematician, and computer scientist. She is a professor in the Department of Mathematics and System Science of

Shandong University Shandong University (, abbreviated as Shanda, , English abbreviation SDU) is a public research comprehensive university in Jinan, Shandong with one campus in Weihai, Shandong and one campus in Qingdao, Shandong and is supported directly by the ...

and an academician of the

Chinese Academy of Sciences The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS); ), known by Academia Sinica in English until the 1980s, is the national academy of the People's Republic of China for natural sciences. It has historical origins in the Academia Sinica during the Republ ...

Early life and education

Wang was born in

Zhucheng Zhucheng () is a county-level city in the southeast of Shandong province, People's Republic of China. It is under the administration of Weifang city and had at the 2010 census a population of 1,086,222 even though its built-up (''or metro'') area ...

Shandong Province Shandong ( , ; ; alternately romanized as Shantung) is a coastal province of the People's Republic of China and is part of the East China region. Shandong has played a major role in Chinese history since the beginning of Chinese civilizatio ...

. She gained bachelor (1987), master (1990) and doctorate (1993) degrees at

, and subsequently lectured in the

mathematics Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...

department from 1993. Her doctoral advisor was

Pan Chengdong Pan Chengdong ( zh, c=潘承洞, p=Pān Chéngdòng; 26 May 1934 – 27 December 1997) was a Chinese mathematician who made numerous contributions to number theory Number theory (or arithmetic or higher arithmetic in older usage) is a br ...

. Wang was appointed assistant professor in 1995, and full professor in 2001. She became the

Chen Ning Yang Yang Chen-Ning or Chen-Ning Yang (; born 1 October 1922), also known as C. N. Yang or by the English name Frank Yang, is a Chinese theoretical physicist who made significant contributions to statistical mechanics, integrable systems, gauge the ...

Professor of the

Center for Advanced Study, Tsinghua University The Institute for Advanced Study, Tsinghua University (CASTU; ) is a research institute established in Beijing in 1997. Modelled after the Princeton-based Institute for Advanced Study, albeit in a university setting, it is engaged in theoretical s ...

in 2005.

Career and research

At the rump session of

CRYPTO Crypto commonly refers to: * Cryptocurrency, a type of digital currency secured by cryptography and decentralization * Cryptography, the practice and study of hiding information Crypto or Krypto may also refer to: Cryptography * Cryptanalysis, ...

2004, she and co-authors demonstrated

collision attack In cryptography, a collision attack on a cryptographic hash tries to find two inputs producing the same hash value, i.e. a hash collision. This is in contrast to a preimage attack where a specific target hash value is specified. There are roughl ...

s against MD5,

SHA-0 In cryptography, SHA-1 (Secure Hash Algorithm 1) is a cryptographically broken but still widely used hash function which takes an input and produces a 160-bit (20-byte) hash value known as a message digest – typically rendered as 40 hexadecima ...

and other related hash functions (a collision occurs when two distinct messages result in the same hash function output). They received a standing ovation for their work. In February 2005, it was reported that Wang and co-authors

Yiqun Lisa Yin Yiqun Lisa Yin is a Chinese-American cryptographer and independent security consultant. Yin is known for breaking the SHA-1 cryptographic hash function, for developing the RC6 block cipher, and for her service as editor of the IEEE P1363 project fo ...

and Hongbo Yu had found a method to find collisions in the

SHA-1 In cryptography, SHA-1 (Secure Hash Algorithm 1) is a cryptographically broken but still widely used hash function which takes an input and produces a 160-bit (20-byte) hash value known as a message digest – typically rendered as 40 hexadecima ...

hash function A hash function is any function that can be used to map data of arbitrary size to fixed-size values. The values returned by a hash function are called ''hash values'', ''hash codes'', ''digests'', or simply ''hashes''. The values are usually u ...

, which is used in many of today's mainstream security products. Their attack is estimated to require less than 2⁶⁹ operations, far fewer than the 2⁸⁰ operations previously thought needed to find a collision in . Their work was published at the CRYPTO '05 conference. In August 2005, an improved attack on SHA-1, discovered by Wang,

Andrew Yao Andrew Chi-Chih Yao (; born December 24, 1946) is a Chinese computer scientist and computational theorist. He is currently a professor and the dean of Institute for Interdisciplinary Information Sciences (IIIS) at Tsinghua University. Yao use ...

and

Frances Yao Frances Foong Chu Yao () is a Chinese-born American mathematician and theoretical computer scientist. She is currently a Chair Professor at the Institute for Interdisciplinary Information Sciences (IIIS) of Tsinghua University. She was Chair Prof ...

, was announced at the

conference rump session. The time complexity of the new attack is claimed to be 2⁶³.

Awards and honors

In 2019, she was named a Fellow of the

International Association for Cryptologic Research International is an adjective (also used as a noun) meaning "between nations". International may also refer to: Music Albums * ''International'' (Kevin Michael album), 2011 * ''International'' (New Order album), 2002 * ''International'' (The T ...

(IACR) for "For essential contributions to the cryptanalysis and design of hash functions, and for service to the IACR." In 2019, she became the first female winner of China's Future Science Prize for her pioneering contribution in cryptography.

References

External links

Xiaoyun Wang
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wang, Xiaoyun 1966 births Living people Chinese cryptographers Chinese women computer scientists Chinese women mathematicians Educators from Shandong Mathematicians from Shandong Members of the Chinese Academy of Sciences Modern cryptographers People from Zhucheng Shandong University alumni Shandong University faculty Tsinghua University faculty Women cryptographers