In 2003, just as the invasion of Iraq was heating up, the U.S. Army reached out to the University of Minnesota’s Center for Distributed Robotics (CDR). They needed compact robots capable of providing real-time reconnaissance and situational awareness for troops on the ground. The CDR, the army knew, was already engaged in developing advanced remote-controlled […]

For more than two decades, the Need for Speed (NFS) video game franchise captured the hearts of young gamers across the globe with its high-octane thrills, heart-pounding car chases, and the adrenaline rush of illegal street racing. Yet for many, especially those who played the earliest iterations in the late ‘90s and early 2000s, NFS […]

In March, 2024, researchers discovered a backdoor hidden in an update of open-source Linux tool XZ Utils – a vulnerability that appears likely to be the result of a multi-year, state-sponsored supply chain attack. This latest close call is only the most recent in a growing history of incidents underscoring the fragility of a modern […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

Growing up, Taisa Kushner loved math. There was a functional elegance to the way mathematical techniques could be used to unravel even the most complex problems, and how seemingly disparate systems were linked through simple equations. But she enjoyed the biological sciences too, and wanted to find a career where she could use her skills […]

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 […]

Among the many tales of innovation and impact to come from Galois over the years, the origin story of Cryptol and SAW is perhaps the most closely tied with that of the company itself. Today, these open-source verification tools have been used in national security, fintech, and cloud computing applications to keep citizens, systems, and […]