Cryptography

Cryptography

 

Cryptography studies the design of distributed systems with resilience against arbitrary adversarial abuse. What makes this task challenging is that at the time a scheme is designed, it is not yet known how an attack may look like or what resources are available to an adversary.

This course is an introduction into modern cryptography and covers fundamental concepts such as

• Security models and security proofs
• Information-theoretic and computational security
• Pseudorandomness
• Private Key Encryption
• Authentication
• Public Key Encryption
• Signature Schemes
• Zero-Knowledge Proofs
• Basic Multiparty Computation Protocols

Location and Time: E2.2 Günter-Hotz-Hörsaal, Wednesday 16.00 - 18.00 and Thursday 16.00 - 18.00 starting on 17.04.2024. [Refer to Information=>Timetable in the menu]

Prerequisites and brush-up lectures:

In order to follow the course effectively, the students need a good working knowledge of the following topics:

• Elements of algebra (Groups, Ring, Fields, Vector Spaces and modules, Polynomials, Matrices and linear maps)
• Elements of number theory (Primes, fund. theorem of arithmetic, GCDs and LCMs, Modular arithmetic, Chinese Remainder Theorem)
• Algorithms for algebra and number theory (Square-and-multiply, Extended Euclid algorithm for numbers and polynomials, Sorting and Searching, basic linear algebra algorithms, factoring polynomials over finite fields)
• Basic knowledge of complexity theory (P vs NP, relativized complexity)
• Working knowledge of probability and combinatorics (Probabilities over finite sets, Bonferroni inequalities, Counting via generating functions)

Supplementary Material:

See Supplementary material. You can find the recommended books in the Semesterapparat.

Exams:

There will be two midterm exams for the lecture. Getting a passing mark of 4.0 for at least one of these two exams is necessary to qualify for the final exam.
In addition, the mark of the better midterm exam will count for 30% of the final mark, while the final exam will count for 70% of the mark.

There will also be a re-exam for the final exam, allowing for improvement of the corresponding 70% of the total mark.