CipherVerse

On June 10, The Institute of World Politics welcomed Andres Kütt, Head Software Architect, and Liina Areng, Head of International Relations, both of the Estonian Information System Authority to speak on the state of cyber security globally, as well as their country’s pioneering transition to electronic governance. Mr. Kütt and Ms. Areng generously offered their time and expertise to inform the IWP community about the importance of a rapidly changing cyber landscape. 

Mr. Kütt told the audience how there is a constant war being waged between the governments, corporations, and organizations that secure private data and the rogue criminal hackers who seek to steal it from their databases. In reality, he said, there is not a guaranteed method of securing online data in this modern era. Rather, there are differing levels of coding sophistication and mathematical formulas by which cryptographers and cyber attackers engage in their web-based warfare. 

Mr. Kütt explained how, essentially, this worldwide data conflict is driven by secure codes and encryptions that protect data and the efforts by rogue states or actors to disrupt them. Time, he says, is the worst enemy of cryptographers, as their electronic battlements are constantly under siege. The most effective way to mitigate the risk of cyber attack, he noted, is to hire the most talented pool of cyber defenders. 

Mr. Kütt and Ms. Areng informed the audience that governments are at the forefront of the cyber challenges that face the 21st century. The Republic of Estonia in particular has been a global leader in so-called “E-governance,” transforming their Baltic nation of 1.3 million into a cyber powerhouse. Estonia, they report, has been highly successful in its endeavor to render the services and obligations of government into electronic models. For example, Estonia is the only one of its kind in the world to have institutionalized E-voting in national elections. This kind of groundbreaking civic engagement, the speakers emphasized, is dependent on a high degree of trust in its accuracy and incorruptibility. 

Mr. Kütt and Ms. Areng explained how the Estonian government relies on its advanced corps of citizen-cryptographers. The Cyber Defense League was established in 2010 as a response to the unprecedented cyber attacks on the country years earlier. This organization of volunteer cryptographers serves the national cyber defense by donating their talents in service to Estonia. 

Mr. Kütt and Ms. Areng went on to explain the interconnectedness of the digital ecosystems that populate the Internet. What affects one facet of the web is sure to translate into tangible consequences for the other. Further, the immense difficulty in identifying the origins of a cyber attack means that a coherent, reliable encryption is increasingly the only viable avenue of defense. 

Cryptography And Trust- Estonia And The Modern Information Society

In episode 3 of Extracts, hosts Sarah Comyn and Megan Kuster arein conversation with Siyabonga Mthembu. Based in Johannesburg, Siya is the lead member of one of South Africa’s best known musical ensembles, The Brother Moves On. The Brother Moves On is widely regarded for their music which, in their own words, offers "transitional music for a transitional generation", An incredibly popular band, The Brother Moves On attracts huge audiences in South Africa and around the world. Their live shows are known for the band’s experimental performance approach which mixes art, music, and stories to create the conditions for transformative audience experiences. In today’s episode, Siya talks with us about the music industry, how Johannesburg’s gold mining foundations and legacies continue to shape his work, his concept of ultra sanity, and the projects he is looking forward to experimenting with next.

About Extracts

EXTRACTS is a podcast series about how artists are working to reimagine the potential futures of mined, excavated, and extractivist landscapes hosted by Sarah Comyn and Megan Kuster.

The music is from the South African performance art ensemble ‘The Brother Moves On’. We gratefully acknowledge the UCD Humanities Institute and UCD’s College of Arts & Humanities Research Strands Seed Funding scheme for funding this project.

Here's the link to John Grzinich's album 'Geofractions,' mentioned in the intro: https://maaheli.bandcamp.com/album/geofractions

Extracts - Episode 3. Siyabonga Mthembu

In episode 4 of Extracts, hosts Sarah Comyn and Megan Kuster are in conversation with forest-maker Aghmad Gamieldien about his work.

Aghmad Gamieldien is the founder of Mzanzi Organics, a social enterprise focusing on small-scale farming, and the creation of pocket forests in and around Cape Town, South Africa. His holistic approach to forest making and rewilding deals with the past of Apartheid in South Africa, including the country's complex history around land. Looking to the future and focusing on connecting people as a way to deepen relations with the earth, Aghmad also advocates for food sovereignty and indigenous trees. Preserving traditions, embracing renewal, and cultivating community, his forest-making work includes - 'District Six Heritage Forest' on Table Mountain, 'Khoi First Nations Forest', and 'Langalibalele Forest.' 

For more information on Aghmad Gamieldien's work check out Mzanzi Organics website:  https://www.mzanzi.org and also on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mzanziorganics/mzanziorganics

The conversation with Aghmad was recorded on 7 January 2025. 

About Extracts

EXTRACTS is a podcast series about how artists are working to reimagine the potential futures of mined, excavated, and extractivist landscapes hosted by Sarah Comyn and Megan Kuster.

The music is from the South African performance art ensemble ‘The Brother Moves On’. We gratefully acknowledge the UCD Humanities Institute and UCD’s College of Arts & Humanities Research Strands Seed Funding scheme for funding this project.

The music is from the South African performance art ensemble ‘The Brother Moves On’.
We gratefully acknowledge the UCD Humanities Institute and UCD’s College of Arts & Humanities Research Strands Seed Funding scheme for funding this project.


Extracts - Episode 4. Aghmad Gamieldien

Dr Madeleine Sertic graduated from UCD Medicine in 2015. Dr Sertic completed her residency in Diagnostic Radiology at the University of Toronto, and her fellowship in Body Imaging at Massachusetts General Hospital. 

Following her training, Dr Sertic joined the faculty at MGH in 2021 and was appointed Instructor of Radiology at Harvard Medical School. Since joining the faculty, Dr Sertic has participated in a broad range of research and clinical activities. She has a special interest in contrast safety and serves as the medical director of the MGH Radiology Contrast Emergency Management Simulation Program. 

She was the site principal investigator in a multi-centre clinical trial on the use of a novel enteric contrast agent for liver MRI and spearheaded the expansion of the contrast-enhanced ultrasound program. 

Dr Sertic also has an interest in women's imaging and is a member of the American College of Radiology (ACR) Appropriateness Criteria panel for OBGYN imaging, with a focus on gynaecologic malignancy. 

MGA Clinical Influencers

UCD MGA launched its Podcast Series - MGA Clinical Influencers - in 2022.

During this podcast series, graduates give us a trip down memory lane when describing their time at UCD (and on some occasions in other Schools of Medicine) and as junior doctors.

They discuss their stellar careers in their chosen speciailty and highlights and challenges during those careers, how they share their expertise and coach others. On a personal level, they will discuss how they manage a decent work life balance, where that is possible and books for us to enjoy and holiday locations we should be thinking about. Our interviewees have compelling stories to tell that will spark your curiosity about life in the clinical speciality they have chosen and the career path they have travelled.

https://www.ucd.ie/medicine/alumni/mgapodcastseries/

Madeleine Sertic - Radiologist at MGH / Instructor of Radiology at Harvard (UCD Class of 2015)

In episode 5 of Extracts, hosts Sarah Comyn and Megan Kuster are in conversation with artist Adrián Balseca about his art practice making visible the often not-so-easily seen narratives enfolded in regional extractive economies, bodies, labour, and mobility. 

Born in the city of Quito in Ecuador, Adrián became involved with socially-engaged arts projects at a young age. Today his work incorporates video, installation, sculptural objects, photography, and graphic design. Similar to Gloria Anzaldúa’s approach of turning to much earlier texts and records, Adrián’s art work is inspired by historical archives and his work explores relationships between minerals, human bodies, and health. In this episode, Adrián speaks with us about his process, his materials, and his ideas about history as his clay and travel as a mode of thinking. 

You can find out more about Adrian's work on his instagram page: https://www.instagram.com/adrian_balseca

The conversation with Adrián was recorded on 19 November 2024. 

Our music is by the South African performance art ensemble ‘The Brother Moves On.’ 

We are grateful for the support of the UCD Humanities Institute, and UCD’s College of Arts & Humanities Research Strands Seed Funding scheme, for funding this project.

Extracts - Episode 5. Adrián Balseca

In episode 6 of extracts, hosts Sarah Comyn and Megan Kuster are in conversation with Ignacio Acosta, who is an artist and researcher working with photography and video in territories under pressure from extractive industries. His collaborative documentary practice, use of drone technology and camera traps, and immersive installations aim to help audiences build a connection to the places impacted by extractive industry and contribute to activist social movements trying to project sites at risk of large scale mining.

Find out more about Ignacio Acosta's work on his website: http://ignacioacosta.com

They recorded the conversation with Ignacio on 19 November 2024. 

About Extracts

EXTRACTS is a podcast series about how artists are working to reimagine the potential futures of mined, excavated, and extractivist landscapes hosted by Sarah Comyn and Megan Kuster.

The music is from the South African performance art ensemble ‘The Brother Moves On’. We gratefully acknowledge the UCD Humanities Institute and UCD’s College of Arts & Humanities Research Strands Seed Funding scheme for funding this project.

The music is from the South African performance art ensemble ‘The Brother Moves On’.
We gratefully acknowledge the UCD Humanities Institute and UCD’s College of Arts & Humanities Research Strands Seed Funding scheme for funding this project.

Extracts - Episode 6. Ignacio Acosta

In episode 7 of Extracts, hosts Sarah Comyn and Megan Kuster are in conversation with interdisciplinary artist Jeanine Oleson (Associate Professor of Sculpture at Rutgers University) about her work on copper and more recent projects.

Jeanine’s art work invites audiences into multi-sensory experiences, often drawing on wry humour and absurdity as a mode of expressing critiques of mastery. In this episode, Jeanine speaks about her interest in labour and workers’ rights, how growing up in a port city developed around the fishing and forestry industries in the US state of Oregon influenced her development as an artist, how copper became the protagonist of her ‘CONduct/(or conDUCT) Matters’ project, and the process of filming at Chino Mine, one of the largest open-pit copper mines in the United States. 

In the show, Jeanine mentions a historic 1954 film based on an actual strike against the Empire Zinc Mine in New Mexico, and the film is called Salt of the Earth. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sk3-As0yh3k

You can find out more about Jeanine Oleson's work on her website: https://www.jeanineoleson.com

The conversation with Jeanine was recorded on 19 November 2024. 

About Extracts

EXTRACTS is a podcast series about how artists are working to reimagine the potential futures of mined, excavated, and extractivist landscapes hosted by Sarah Comyn and Megan Kuster.

The music is from the South African performance art ensemble ‘The Brother Moves On’. We gratefully acknowledge the UCD Humanities Institute and UCD’s College of Arts & Humanities Research Strands Seed Funding scheme for funding this project.

The music is from the South African performance art ensemble ‘The Brother Moves On’.
We gratefully acknowledge the UCD Humanities Institute and UCD’s College of Arts & Humanities Research Strands Seed Funding scheme for funding this project.


Extracts - Episode 7. Jeanine Oleson

This episode of the UCD Humanities Institute's podcast series features a recording of a Research Integrity event jointly organised by the UCD Humanities Institute and the UCD Earth Institute as part of the ReCLAIM project TRAIN - Transnational Research and Interdisciplinary Networks.

Sponsored by the UCD Research Culture ReCLAIM initiative funded by Wellcome Trust, the event consisted of an informal afternoon meeting with members of the research community, with four invited experts in the field

Irene Kavanagh (University College Cork)
Myrte Vos (Leiden University)
Grace Mulcahy (University College Dublin)
and Shen Wang (University College Dublin)

The event was chaired by Dr Bianca Tedaldi. 

Research Integrity - ReCLAIM

Prof John Moriarty graduated from UCD Medicine in 2003 with First Class Honours in both Medicine and Surgery and the Misericordae medal for first in his Mater class.

John did his internship and medical SHO years at the Mater, commenced his radiology residency in 2005 at the Mater Misericordiae University Hospital prior to becoming a fellow of the Faculty of Radiologists in 2008. He moved to UCLA in 2009 where he completed fellowships in Interventional Radiology and Cardiovascular Intervention.

Dr Moriarty is a specialist in cardiovascular and interventional radiology at UCLA. He is Professor of Radiology and of Medicine (Cardiology). He returned to Ireland as a consultant Interventional Radiologist at the Mater in 2020, before returning again to UCLA in 2022 as Vice Chair (Clinical Research) of the Department of Radiological Sciences at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. He is also director of the program for Interventional Innovation, and Co-director of the UCLA PE Response Team. He has multiple roles in the UCLA Hospital system leadership, and has completed leadership and management training at Harvard School of Business and Public Health. 

Dr Moriarty is a national and international leader in the field of venous thromboembolism, DVT, PE and clot management. He has led several large international trials in this area, given over 200 invited lectures, published over 100 papers and been recognised with awards such as LA Top Doc. He is the current President of the PERT Consortium, the largest society dedicated to Pulmonary Embolism in the world. 


MGA Clinical Influencers

UCD MGA launched its Podcast Series - MGA Clinical Influencers - in 2022.

During this podcast series, graduates give us a trip down memory lane when describing their time at UCD (and on some occasions in other Schools of Medicine) and as junior doctors.

They discuss their stellar careers in their chosen speciailty and highlights and challenges during those careers, how they share their expertise and coach others. On a personal level, they will discuss how they manage a decent work life balance, where that is possible and books for us to enjoy and holiday locations we should be thinking about. Our interviewees have compelling stories to tell that will spark your curiosity about life in the clinical speciality they have chosen and the career path they have travelled.

https://www.ucd.ie/medicine/alumni/mgapodcastseries/


Prof John Moriarty - Specialist in cardiovascular and interventional radiology at UCLA (UCD Class of 2003)

The Critical Minerals Symposium was organised by Dr Gigi Tang and Katie Donnelly, and took place in UCD Humanities Institute on November 7, 2025. 

The keynote lecture 'Quarry of Thought - Minerality and AI' was given by Associate Professor Tom Nurmi, The Norwegian University of Science and Technology.

The podcast also features some opening remarks by Associate Professor Sarah Comyn from UCD.

Quarry of Thought: Minerality and AI. Critical Minerals Symposium Keynote by Tom Nurmi

Recording of a talk at the HI by Professor Sarah Colvin (Cambridge) entitled 'Haunting Times - Ghosted Memory and Epistemic Revenants in Zhadan's Ukraine (Voroshilovgrad, 2010) and Bulawayo's Zimbabwe (Glory, 2022).

Serhiy Zhadan’s novel Voroshilovgrad (2010) is set in a fictional Ukraine in the early 2000s, an imaginative world where the dead and the living intermingle; NoViolet Bulawayo’s Glory (2022) in a fictional Zimbabwe in the 2010s, where the protagonist encounters ghosts from a past that has not been dealt with. The talk and discussion will consider how the novels expose the repressive practice of epistemic ghosting and stage the resistant practice of epistemic haunting. Those who have been ghosted return, bringing (back) memories and history that complicate linear and singular memory management.

Sarah Colvin held chairs at the universities of Edinburgh, Birmingham, and Warwick before becoming Schröder Professor of German at the University of Cambridge in 2014. Her research and teaching interests include the areas of literary aesthetics, cultural production and social justice, the political novel and prisoner writing as well as narrative theory and narrative ethics. She is PI of the Cambridge team for the Horizon Europe project Cartography of the Political Novel in Europe (www.caponeu.eu). Her recent publications include the monographs Literature and Epistemic Injustice: Power and Resistance in the Contemporary Novel (Routledge 2026) and Shadowland: The Story of Germany Told by its Prisoners (Reaktion Books 2022) and the edited collections Epistemic Justice and Creative Agency: Global Perspectives on Literature and Film (with Stephanie Galasso, Routledge 2023) and Sharon Dodua Otoo: Literature, Politics, Possibility (with Tara Talwar Windsor, Wiley 2024).

Sarah Colvin. Haunting Times - Ghosted Memory and Epistemic Revenants in Zhadan's Ukraine and Bulawayo's Zimbabwe.

Information Security
 1. Introduction
  ○ Security by obscurity
   § Steganography
    □ Hiding data inside another form of data, like using non-used bits in image to hide a message
     § Cool, but not practical.
     § Disadvantages
      ◊ Algorithm secrecy vs. key secrecy
  ○ Cryptography is everywhere and yet if done right, you can barely see it.
  ○ Goals: 
   § Confidentiality
    □ Secrets stay secret.
   § Integrity
    □ Data is not tampered with.
   § Non-Repudiation
    □ No party can deny sending messages.
   § Authentication
    □ Each party can ensure that the sender is what they expect.
  ○ Cryptography
   § Hashing
   § Encryption
   § Signing
   § Protocols
  ○ Random Number Generators
   § Extremely important, almost all encryption/hashing strength is affected by how random the random number generator is.
   § Don't use simple random number, use a cryptographic random number generator with a sophisticated source of entropy.
   § Pseudorandom number generator
   § Dual_EC_DRBG random generator backdoor
 2. Body
  ○ Hashing (one Way)
   § Properties
    □ Fixed length output no matter what size the input was
    □ Very easy to compute the hash of a given message, however very hard to compute from a hash the corresponding input.
    □ Mathematically infeasible to generate a message that has a given hash
    □ Any modification to a message produces a completely different hash that has no relationship to the original message's hash.
    □ It is mathematically infeasible to find two messages with the same hash. Hash Collision
   § Hashing Functions
    □ Provides data integrity, however lacks authentication
    □ Examples
     ® MD5 
      ◊ Considered Insecure
     ® Secure Hash Family SHA-X, Sha-1, Sha-2 [Sha256, Sha512], Sha-3
      ◊ Sha-1 is considered insecure.
      ◊ Sha-1, Sha-2 designed by NSA
      ◊ Sha-3 is not designed by NSA, Competition winner.
    □ Attacks
     ® Brute force
      ◊ CPU's are getting faster and cheaper every day.
      ◊ GPU's are getting faster and cheaper every day.
      ◊ Special Hash calculating hardware is becoming more available especially with the BitCoin push.
     ® Rainbow table attacks
      ◊ Pre-Calculated tables where you can reverse lookup a hash to a value
      ◊ Try www.crackstation.net
   § Hash Message Authentication Codes (HMAC)
    □ Adds authentication to integrity
    □ Can be used with all previous algorithms, HMACMD5, HMACShA1, HMAC256 … etc.
   § Salted Hash
    □ Adds random salt to mitigate rainbow table
    □ Salts are unique per record, and not a secret.
   § Password Based Key Derivation Function (PBKDF2)
    □ RSA Public Key Cryptographic Standard PKCS #5 Version 2.0
    □ Internet Engineering Task Force RFC 2898 Specification
     ® Adds a lot of iterations to slow it just enough to mitigate brute force (default 50,000 iterations)
     ® Adds random salt to mitigate rainbow table
    □ Disadvantage: It can be easily implemented with hardware which makes it vulnerable to bruteforce even with high number of iterations
   § Bcrypt
    □ Password Hashing function
    □ State of the art password hashing
   § Usages
    □ Integrity Check
Password Storage

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EP46 - AskDeveloper Podcast - Cryptography - Part 1 - Introduction and Hashing

#3 John Pacific of NuCypher | Applied Cryptography, Adversarial Thinking & Arbitrary Computation on Encrypted Data

#3 John Pacific of NuCypher | Applied Cryptography, Adversarial Thinking & Arbitrary Computation

Interview location: Palo Alto
Interview date: Thursday 31st Jan, 2018
Company: Cryptomathic
Role: Cryptographer and Security Expert

A number of pioneers developed the cryptographic and technical foundations for which Bitcoin is built upon. Nick Szabo highlighted a number of these people in his Tweet:

“Inventors of the most important technologies in Bitcoin: digital signatures and Merkle trees (Merkle), elliptic curve crypto (Koblitz), malicious-fault-tolerant consensus (Lamport), elliptic curve crypto (independent inventor: Miller).”

Many others along the way have contributed to the success of Bitcoin, either through early work or attempts at created a digital currency, names such as Adam Back, David Chaum and Szabo himself.

Whitfield Diffie sits alongside all of these people. His work on cryptography should not be forgotten in the history of Bitcoin and I had the pleasure of sitting down with him to discuss this, how he was introduced to Bitcoin and other such topics as privacy and security.

The What Bitcoin Did Podcast

Whitfield Diffie on the History of Cryptography

The pending cryptographic Quantum Apocalypse requires that we replace the hashing and encryption algorithms used through the internet, enterprise networks, mobile service, and popular devices. Join our experts to learn more about the requirements for quantum-resistant algorithms to survive the Quantum Apocalypse.

Root Causes 06: Quantum-Resistant Cryptography

Prof Gary McGuire (UCD) - “Post Quantum Cryptography”, a podcast from the UCD/IBM Quantum Technologies Colloquium 2019.

The colloquium focused on emerging research opportunities in Quantum Technologies and was organised in partnership with IBM Research - Ireland, UCD Research, and the UCD Institute for Discovery. It took place in the Moore Auditorium in the O'Brien Centre for Science at UCD on 28th of March 2019.

Quantum technology is an emerging and highly interdisciplinary field of study that draws on expertise in Science and Engineering but is expected to be highly disruptive to a range of other disciplines. Though early in its development, quantum computing is now available on real hardware via the cloud through IBM Q. This radically new kind of computing holds open the possibility of solving some problems that are now and perhaps always will be intractable for “classical” computers.

This event will cover a broad spectrum of cutting-edge technologies ranging from quantum simulation, to quantum computing, to post-quantum cryptography, and will combine academic and industrial sessions, with contributions from leading scientists and practitioners in the field. As part of this event, IBM Research -- Ireland will introduce IBM Q, an industry-first initiative to build universal quantum computers for business and science, and UCD will outline exciting new developments in Quantum Computing hardware.

UCD Institute for Discovery supports emerging interdisciplinary research in University College Dublin and helps to build and strengthen interdiscplinary networks and research themes across all disciplines in the University. For more information go to www.ucd.ie/discovery

The speakers were Dr Martin Mevissen (IBM Research), Prof Monique Laurent (CWI Research Centre), Prof Gary McGuire (UCD), Prof Jiri Vala (NUI Maynooth), Dr Krzysztof Pomorski (UCD), Dr Radu Marinescu (IBM Research-Ireland), Dr Elena Blokhina (UCD), Dr Dirk Leipold (CEO of equal1.labs), Prof Bogdan Staszewski (UCD), Dr Jakub Marecek (IBM).

The colloquium focused on emerging research opportunities in Quantum Technologies and was organised in partnership with IBM Research - Ireland, UCD Research, and the UCD Institute for Discovery.
It took place in the Moore Auditorium in the O'Brien Centre for Science at UCD on 28th of March 2019.

UCD Institute for Discovery supports emerging interdisciplinary research in University College Dublin and helps to build and strengthen interdiscplinary networks and research themes across all disciplines in the University. For more information go to www.ucd.ie/discovery

The speakers were Dr Martin Mevissen (IBM Research), Prof Monique Laurent (CWI Research Centre), Prof Gary McGuire (UCD), Prof Jiri Vala (NUI Maynooth), Dr Krzysztof Pomorski (UCD), Dr Radu Marinescu (IBM Research-Ireland), Dr Elena Blokhina (UCD), Dr Dirk Leipold (CEO of equal1.labs), Prof Bogdan Staszewski (UCD), Dr Jakub Marecek (IBM).

Gary McGuire - Post Quantum Cryptography

Founder of EPIC Knowledge Society and SPACE Creative Culture Labs. I am a Futurist and Data Scientist with Professional Mastery and Pragmatic Insights on Digital Transformation and Innovation Management with extensive credentials on Digital Enterprise Architectures, Crypto Economics, Customer Experience Design, Social Entrepreneurship Incubation, Business Model Innovation, Innovation Ecosystems, Innovation Analytics, Innovation Consulting, Social Business Networks, Academic Research Networks, Industrial Research Alliances, New Service Incubation, New Product Incubation, New Platform Innovation, High performing Teams, Cross Competency Innovation etc.

Gary McGuire - Post Quantum Cryptography

UCD Institute for Discovery

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