Formal Verso: the Formal Methods Future of Smart Contract Security

In May 2016, the newly created Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO), an investor-directed venture capital fund built as a smart contract on the Ethereum blockchain, raised around $150 million worth of digital currency. Hopes were high. The fund was to be a fully transparent and decentralized organization, with investment decisions made collectively through member votes, and […]

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Introducing Cheesecloth: A Tool for Proving Software Vulnerabilities in Zero Knowledge

In the world of cybersecurity, proving software vulnerabilities responsibly is a critical challenge.  Imagine a security analyst discovers a vulnerability and wants to tell a software company that their program can be hacked. Here, they face a common dilemma: when they tell the software company about the vulnerability, the company may choose to simply ignore […]

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Galois / Twisp: Avoiding Foolishness in Distributed Systems

“Foolish consistency,” Emerson claimed, “… is the hobgoblin of little minds.” We agree! The problem, in both philosophy and distributed computing, is to figure out when consistency is foolish and when it is absolutely necessary. Fortunately, formal methods technologies can help us address this problem. Galois and our partner Twisp have been using the P language for […]

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Galois Unlocks the Power of Private Set Intersection: A Game-Changer for Data Privacy

The US Department of Education (DOE) was in a quandary. Every few years, they were required to report to Congress on the state of undergraduate student financial aid in the United States, but the confidential data needed to create the report was divided between two different internal offices—offices forbidden by policy to share data with […]

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Bringing Zero Knowledge Proofs to the Masses

The arcane world of cryptographic proofs seldom finds expression on the dashboard of your average automobile, but a partnership between Galois and Cybernetica is steering the state of the art in privacy-preserving technology towards the road less traveled—in Estonia, to be precise. In 2020, Estonia’s Environmental Investment Centre introduced a public program to encourage the […]

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Subverting Censorship: How a Galois-developed Android App Could Change the Game for Pro-Democracy Activists

For pro-democracy activists living under authoritarian regimes, communication can be a tricky – and often dangerous – endeavor. Posting dissident messages to social media, sending an email, or texting a friend or colleague can risk interception by vigilant government agents, censorship, and even jail time. Over the past few years, Galois has been developing, in […]

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2023: Year in Review

As 2023 draws to a close, we take a moment to look back. It’s been a jam-packed year for Galois, from software releases to research breakthroughs. Our intrepid team of engineers and scientists has published papers, led workshops, served on committees and boards, presented at conferences, led science communication efforts, and spearheaded truly cutting edge […]

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The Galois Internship Experience: Himanshu Goyal

In our latest blog post, we chat with Georgia Tech master’s student Himanshu Goyal about his internship experience at Galois. Here, Himanshu discusses his passion for software systems, Galois’s unique culture, and how his internship experience helped hone his engineering and research skills. Read on to learn more about Himanshu’s journey. Why Galois? How did […]

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