News

PA: exam info | Project 2 Submission | Project 3 out

Written on 10.07.24 (last change on 10.07.24) by Sylvain Chatel

Hello everyone,

TLDR;

Exam Tomorrow Jul 11th at 2 pm in CISPA, E9 1, room 0.05. Be present in the room by 1:45 pm
Project 2 submission instructions (deadline Jul 22).
Project 3 is now available (deadline Aug 16). WARNING: real-life experiment takes real time.

We have a… Read more

Hello everyone,

TLDR;

Exam Tomorrow Jul 11th at 2 pm in CISPA, E9 1, room 0.05. Be present in the room by 1:45 pm
Project 2 submission instructions (deadline Jul 22).
Project 3 is now available (deadline Aug 16). WARNING: real-life experiment takes real time.

We have a couple of Public Announcements today.

The exam will take place tomorrow Jul 11th in CISPA, E9 1, room 0.05 (i.e., the lecture hall where the class was held). Please try to be present in the room by 1:45 pm as we will start the exam directly at 2 pm. The exam will last for two hours. You do not need a calculator. You can bring up to 5 clearly marked handwritten sheets of A4 paper (10 sides) with you to the exam.

The submission instructions for Project 2 are as follows:
- To submit your solution for Project 2, push your code to your assigned repository at lab-pets.privacy-preserving.systems in the branch project2. You should be able to see the results of the example test cases in the GitLab pipeline after your push.
- Make sure to commit and push before the deadline.
- Submit your report on CMS before the deadline.

We have published the third and final project in the material section. The deadline is Aug 16th.

You can find the handout, report template, and the link to the skeleton code in the Materials sections on CMS. To start, first read carefully through the project handout, and the skeleton README. You can then follow the instructions in the skeleton README to setup the environment and pull the skeleton code, and begin working on the project.

To submit your code, push your code to your assigned repository in the branch project3. Note that no pipeline is configured for this project, so it is normal to see no feedback from the pipeline (e.g. green ticks).
To submit your report, upload it in the CMS.
Make sure you observe the deadline.

Note that because this project involves some real-life measurements, it is more time-consuming than the other projects; please consider starting early enough.

All the best with the final preparation for the exam and see you tomorrow at 1:45 pm.

Reminder: register for the exam on LSF by Tomorrow

Written on 02.07.24 by Wouter Lueks

Hi! Just a gentle reminder to register for the PETS exam on LSF by tomorrow. If you already registered, you should be able to see your registration on CMS as well. If not, please let me know and we'll fix it.

See you all on Thursday for the final lecture on Differential Privacy,

- Wouter

Project 2 skeleton update

Written on 20.06.24 by Sylvain Chatel

Hello Everyone,

Thanks to some eagle eyes and your feedback, we fixed some unclarities in the skeleton and handout.

We have updated the skeleton repo and it is accessible at https://lab-pets.privacy-preserving.systems/pets24/ref/ref/-/tree/project2/ (with your CMS credentials via the Login with… Read more

Hello Everyone,

Thanks to some eagle eyes and your feedback, we fixed some unclarities in the skeleton and handout.

We have updated the skeleton repo and it is accessible at https://lab-pets.privacy-preserving.systems/pets24/ref/ref/-/tree/project2/ (with your CMS credentials via the Login with Github button)

You will find the new version and also in the history the original version that was on CMS (original commit 20ca6867 and the new version ff9101e1).

We clarified both the skeleton and the tests but, to do so, we had to modify slightly the API.

Of course, for those of you who have already made significant progress/finished, you can submit either version.

Otherwise, consider taking a look at this new version.

Thanks

Tracking Lecture link with password

Written on 20.06.24 (last change on 20.06.24) by Sylvain Chatel

Hello Everyone,

Here is the link with the password for the tracking lecture is available in the material section.

Thanks

Tracking Lecture June 20th; remote and starts at 2pm

Written on 20.06.24 (last change on 20.06.24) by Sylvain Chatel

Hello Everyone,

For today's lecture on Tracking we are pleased to host Prof. Christine Utz.

The lecture will start at 2 pm until 4 pm.

It will be broadcast on Zoom https://cispa-de.zoom-x.de/j/63910955360 the link with the password is available in the material section.

Hoping to see many… Read more

Hello Everyone,

For today's lecture on Tracking we are pleased to host Prof. Christine Utz.

The lecture will start at 2 pm until 4 pm.

It will be broadcast on Zoom https://cispa-de.zoom-x.de/j/63910955360 the link with the password is available in the material section.

Hoping to see many of you there.

Written on 12.06.24 (last change on 08.07.24) by Sylvain Chatel

Hello Everyone,

Project 2 is now up. The skeleton and handout are available on the material section.

Please make sure you test the infrastructure early.

The project is due on ~~Jul 15th~~ July 22nd.

Midterm Take-Home Exam now Available; due June 14, 2024

Written on 31.05.24 by Wouter Lueks

We just published the midterm for PETS. You can find it in the materials section. You have until Friday June 14 to complete it; please submit your solutions as a typeset PDF via CMS. The material only covers the first 4 weeks of the class. Good luck! We hope you'll enjoy solving the questions. Looking… Read more

- Wouter

Thursday 23rd of May: No live lecture

Written on 21.05.24 by Sylvain Chatel

Hi Everyone,

Just a reminder that there will not be a live lecture this week on Thursday, May 23rd.

The lecture will be recorded and uploaded early next week.

Project 1 Submission

Written on 21.05.24 by Sylvain Chatel

We have opened the submission platform for Project 1.

To submit your code:

Login to https://lab-pets.privacy-preserving.systems with your CMS credentials (via the Login with Github button).
Once logged in, wait while the system initialises your repository. This may take up to 15 minutes.… Read more

We have opened the submission platform for Project 1.

To submit your code:

Login to https://lab-pets.privacy-preserving.systems with your CMS credentials (via the Login with Github button).
Once logged in, wait while the system initialises your repository. This may take up to 15 minutes. Afterwards, you should see a repo named pets24-[0-9a-f]+, to which you are assigned Developer role.
Create a personal access token or upload your SSH key.
You can now clone the repository. Commit and push your code in the project1 branch. Test pipelines will run automatically after each push. You can check the test results in the output of job test.
Commit to your solution before the deadline.

First class today! Starting at 13:15h

Written on 18.04.24 by Wouter Lueks

Hi Everyone,

Today is the first lecture for the Privacy-Enhancing Technologies class. I'm looking forward to seeing many of you in person today. As per German tradition, the lecture will start at 13:15h.

You can find the slides for the lecture shortly before the start of the class in the materials section.

Show all

Privacy-Enhancing Technologies

Digital technologies have become an essential part of our day-to-day lives. While often beneficial, these technologies also bring great privacy risks. In this course, you will learn how to mitigate these risks by designing 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 1pm to 3pm
Exercises: Thursdays from 3pm to 4pm
Room: E9.1 (CISPA building), room 0.05 (main lecture room)

Schedule

The following schedule is subject to small changes.

April 18: Introduction to Privacy
April 25: Secure Multi-Party Computation
May 2: Privacy-Preserving Authentication
May 9: no class (Ascension Day)
May 16: Fully Homomorphic Encryption
May 23: no class
May 30: no class (Corpus Christi)
June 6: Anonymous Communication
June 13: Censorship Resistance
June 20: Tracking (guest lecture: Christine Utz; online)
June 27: Anonymization / Protected Data Release
July 4: Differential 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.

Office Hours

Location: CISPA, E9 1, room 1.02

Times: Tuesdays 9am-10am; Thursdays 11am-noon.

Exceptions: May 9th, May 30st, July dates TBD.

Grading

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

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

Projects

As part of this class you will work on three projects to implement and evaluate a privacy-preserving system. The projects contribute 40% to the final grade: 10% for the first project and 15% for each of the second and third projects. There is no option to improve the grade for the projects.

Midterm Exercise Set

There is a midterm exercises set. Possible grades are: Fail or Pass. 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 11, 2pm--4pm (tentative)
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 TBD:

Exam date: TBA
Format (to be confirmed): TBD
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.