Research
CS6209 Topics in cryptography - Spring term 2012
Lecture: Tuesday, 12-14h at COM1 Room 212 - See IVLE for a lesson plan.Grading
Homework: 50%Project: 35%
Presentation: 15%
Office hours
Wednesday, 9-10h, CQT, Block S15, Room 04-06For intermediate questions please contact me by email at CS6209-2011 [at.) locc [dot> la
Resources
There will be no book for this class. Lecture notes and materials are available on IVLE.Outline
The focus of this year's class will be on information-theoretic cryptography. In particular, on how we can achieve security in cryptography from physical assumptions.We start by learning basic measures to quantify security, and learn some necessary information theoretic tools. We proceed to examine several cryptographic problems such as establishing a key or securely computing a function. We will learn about different cryptographic primitives that can be used to solve these problems. We examine simple protocols that are secure based on physical assumptions about real world devices which are readily available to us (such as boxes, envelopes, candy and the like). Finally, we will continue to investigate fundamental techniques to prove the security of protocols based on various physical assumptions. My goal with this somewhat more hands-on approach is that you will gain an in-depth knowledge of all the essential concepts and techniques needed to tackle (quantum) cryptographic problems. The first part of this class will be purely classical. In the second part, we will also encounter quantum cryptographic protocols. No prior knowledge of either cryptography or quantum information is necessary. However, a firm grasp of basic probability theory is useful.
