News

Grades on LFS and backup exam reminder

Written on 26.09.23 by Wouter Lueks

We've upload all your grades to LFS. Please let us know as soon as possible if something doesn't look correct. This is also a gentle (and final) reminder to register for the backup exam if you plan to take it. The exam is on the 12th, so you'll have to register before October 5 on LFS to be allowed to… Read more

Exam Graded and Inspection; Re-Exam Date

Written on 06.09.23 by Wouter Lueks

We've finished grading the exam and the grades should now be visible to you. I really enjoyed reading your (sometimes very creative!) answers. The exam inspection will take place on Friday September 8, in the lecture room (CISPA0, 0.05) between 2pm and 3pm. Please let me know before hand by email if… Read more

I've also tentatively fixed the re-exam date for October 12 in the afternoon. You should be able to register on LFS for the exam in a few days.

Project 1 Graded

Written on 18.07.23 by Wouter Lueks

The grades and feedback for Project 1 should now also be available. Thanks for your patience! Please let me know if something looks amiss.

Good luck with the remaining other exams as well as with wrapping up Project 2,

- Wouter

Deadline Extension for Project 2

Written on 10.07.23 by Wouter Lueks

We've moved the deadline for the second project to August 11 to give you more time and space to work on the exams. The submissions for Project 2 are now available on CMS as well. Good luck with the preparation of the PETS exam for next week Monday.

Midterm graded

Written on 04.07.23 by Wouter Lueks

We have finished grading the midterm exercise set. The results should be available on the CMS. You should also be able to download an annotated version of your submission with individual feedback. If not, please let me know soon.

To help you prepare for the exam, I have also uploaded a document… Read more

To help you prepare for the exam, I have also uploaded a document (see materials section) with frequent errors and general feedback and tips.

Preparation for the Exam

Written on 04.07.23 by Wouter Lueks

Registration for the Exam. If you have not yet done so, please make sure that you register for the exam by next week Monday July 10 at the latest using LFS (or CMS directly if you cannot use LFS). If you do not register, we cannot issue your grade.

Q&A Sessions. I've scheduled several Q&A sessions,… Read more

Q&A Sessions. I've scheduled several Q&A sessions, see the schedule here. You are welcome to ask questions about the material and midterm in preparation for the exam. This week Thursday there will be no session, but there will be an extra (short) session on Monday July 10 as well as a longer session on Thursday July 13. You are also welcome to ask questions on the Mattermost channel. Please make sure to ask as early as possible; answering many questions at the last minute is difficult.

About the Exam. Some final information about the exam. Most of this was covered during the introduction lecture already.

The exam takes place on Monday July 17 at 18:00 -- 20:00. Please arrive early.
The exam will be open book. You can bring 10 sheets of A4 paper with you.
You should expect 3 questions with 2-3 sub questions each. The exam follow a similar style than the midterm, but we will have only 2 hours, so it will be a little bit shorter. Make sure you look at the feedback and most repeated errors documents so you can avoid making the same mistakes twice.
The exam will cover the material from all 10 lectures except for the censorship resistance lecture.

Finally, I wish all of you good luck and great studying in preparation for the exam!

Registration for Exam

Written on 22.06.23 by Wouter Lueks

Please remember to sign up for the exam on LFS. The exam will take place on July 17, 6pm to 8pm. You must register at least one week in advance.

Last call: if you (1) took an earlier version of the PETS, and (2) haven't told me about this; please let me know by the end of the week at the latest.

Project 2 now available

Written on 12.06.23 by Wouter Lueks

The second project is now available! Next Thursday (June 15) I will do a quick introduction to the project during the exercise part. But, if you have time, I recommend to already look at the handout. The corresponding x86/x64 Virtual Machine will be available as soon as possible. The deadline is July 28. Because this leaves only 7 weeks to complete the project, we've somewhat reduced the scope and provided additional hints to help with implementation.

Good luck and be sure to use the office hours if you have any questions! See you all on Thursday,

- Wouter

No lecture this week

Written on 23.05.23 by Wouter Lueks

Reminder: this week there will be no in person lecture. Recordings of the class will be available early next week. Good luck with finishing the first project!

Material from lectures and project registration

Written on 14.04.23 by Wouter Lueks

Dear All,

Welcome again to the PETS 2023 lecture. I've added the slides and recordings of yesterday's lecture to the materials section of the course. Slides for upcoming lectures will be available there as well in the future (and before the start of the lecture).

The programming projects for… Read more

Dear All,

The programming projects for this course must be done in pairs. Please make sure to register your teams by Monday April 24 at the latest. You can create your team on your personal status page. If you have trouble finding a partner, feel free to use the Lab Assignment Forum to announce that you are looking.

Have a great weekend!

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Privacy-Enhancing Technologies

Digital technologies have become an essential part of our day to day live. While often beneficial, these technologies also bring great privacy risks. In this course you will learn how to mitigate these risks by design privacy-friendly systems and how to evaluate the privacy-protections offered by systems.

To reason about the privacy of systems you will learn how to define desirable privacy properties and how to reason about privacy attackers. Privacy can be violated both at the application level (i.e., what data parties exchange) as well as on the meta-data level (i.e., how parties exchange data). You will learn about techniques to offer protection at both of these layers.

On the application layer, we’ll discuss cryptographic techniques such as secure multi-party computation, homomorphic encryption and anonymous authentication that together can be used to ensure privacy at the application layer. We will also discuss data anonymisation techniques such as k-anonymity and differential privacy to enable privacy-friendly data publishing. On the meta-data level, we’ll explore techniques for anonymous communication, censorship resistance, (browser) tracking and location privacy.

At the end of this course you will be able to:

Explain basic building-blocks for designing privacy-friendly systems
Combine these building blocks to solve simple problems while maintaining privacy
Evaluate the privacy of simple proposed systems.

Prerequisites

The privacy-enhancing technologies class is an advanced lecture. You will learn a lot about how to design and analyse privacy-friendly systems, but this is not an easy 6EC course. A basic understanding of security and cryptography (as taught for example in CySec1/CySec2 or the Security course) is essential to be able to follow the material in this course. If you have not mastered this material we strongly recommend you to take this course next year instead.

Schedule

Main Lecture: Thursdays from 2pm to 4pm
Exercises: Thursdays from 4pm to 5pm
Room: E9.1 (CISPA building), room 0.05 (main lecture room)

Schedule

The following schedule is subject to small changes.

April 13: Introduction to Privacy
April 20: Secure Multi-Party Computation
April 27: (Fully) Homomorphic Encryption
May 4: Privacy-preserving authentication
May 11: Anonymous communication
May 18: no class (Ascension Day)
May 25: Censorship resistance (cancelled)
June 1: Tracking
June 8: no class (Fronleichnam)
June 15: Anonymization / protected data release
June 22: Differential Privacy
June 29: Location Privacy

Format

The course will be fully in-person, and attending the lectures and exercise sessions is highly recommended. Attending online is not possible. As a courtesy, we will make a best effort attempt to publish recordings of the lectures. You should not assume that recordings will be available. We will not publish recordings of the exercise sessions.

Learning to reason about privacy is difficult. We strongly recommend that you attend the exercise sessions to practice your reasoning skills.

Grading

The final grade for this course consists of 60% for the final exam and 40% for the projects plus bonus points.

Grading subject to small changes. Details will be explained in the first lecture.

Projects

As part of this class you will work on two projects to implement and evaluate a privacy-preserving system. The projects are graded and must be completed in pairs (exceptions only possible after permission from the lecturer). The projects contribute 40% to the final grade: 15% for the first project and 25% for the second project. There is no option to improve the grade for the projects.

Midterm Exercise Set

There is a midterm exercises set. Possible grades are: Fail, Pass, Good (top 40%, 0.3pt bonus). A passing grade is required to be allowed to participate in the exam. If you receive a Fail (and only if you receive a Fail) you will have the opportunity to improve your submission.

Final Exam

Exam date: July 17, 6pm--8pm
Format: Written exam
Location: CISPA, E9 1, room 0.05

The final written exam tests your understanding of the material covered in the class, exercises and projects. You must receive a passing grade on the exam alone. If you do, the exam is graded and contributes 60% to the final grade. Having received a passing grade for the midterm exercise set is required to be allowed to participate in the exam.

The re-exam will take place on October 12:

Exam date: October 12, afternoon
Format (to be confirmed): Oral exam
Location: TBA

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I still take this course if I took “Privacy Enhancing Technologies” (2021) before?

Yes. The Privacy Enhancing Technologies course of 2021 taught by Yang Zhang is very different from the current version of the course. You are therefore allowed to take both courses. However if you took the 2021 course, you must inform the lecturer as soon as possible. Failure to do so means we cannot award you a grade.