Instructor: Leonard Schulman
schulman@cc, CCB 234, 404-894-6438. Office hours thursdays 2-3 (subject to change) or by appointment.
Class: TR 12-1:30, Skiles 171.
| Course Announcement | References | Assignments | Suggested project topics |
Special lecture series: Ramarathnam Venkatesan (Microsoft) will be giving a series of Lectures on Cryptography, March 27-31 and April 3-7 at 11 am in Skiles 243.
Required course text: D. R. Stinson, Cryptography, CRC Press 1995.
Recommended reference on information theory: T. M. Cover & J. A. Thomas, Elements of Information Theory, Wiley 1991.
Recommended references on number theory: G. E. Andrews, Number Theory, W. B. Saunders 1971 / Dover 1994; R. Kumanduri & C. Romero, Number Theory with Computer Applications, 1998.
Recommended references on algebra: I. N. Herstein (pub info?); M. Artin, Algebra, Prentice-Hall 1991.
Recommended reference on algorithms: Cormen, Leiserson and Rivest, Introduction to Algorithms, MIT Press 1990.
If you are purchasing the 2'nd edition of the Schneier text, try to get the fifth printing (or later if such a thing exists); I'm told earlier printings have many typos. See also an errata page.
What does this say? Tell me on tuesday 18/January. The code is a 38-38 substitution cipher for the 26 lower-case English letters, the space character, and the punctuation marks .,-():!?'";
Problem set #2 (due date extended to 24/Feb)
Guest lecturer March 2: Blaine Burnham.
Drafts/outlines due 17/Feb; papers due 14/Mar, at which time the presentations will begin.
Describe cryptographic protocols in current use. Which cryptographic algorithms do they use, how do they do key management, what attacks have they been subject to. Netscape SSL (secure socket layer), Kerberos, etc. [L. Subramanian]
DES (digital encryption standard): how it works, the history of its development, questions about why it seems to be fairly secure (in the sense that attacks usually exhaustively search the key space) and whether there's a "trap door". Susceptibility to differential cryptanalysis. [Judah de Paula]
PKC (public key cryptography): presentation of the leading algorithms, their history and relative advantages. Discuss also some proposed PKC algorithms that were cracked, and how. [Stephen Kloder]
Propose your own PKC algorithm. (Crack your friend's.)
Zero knowledge proofs. [Gary Yngve] [David Cunningham]
PGP (pretty good privacy): describe the protocols implemented and the key management method. Possible attacks? Discuss the legal history. [Alex Parfenov & Byron Saltysiak]
Politics of cryptography, US and global: export controls; civil liberties vs. law enforcement; restrictions on publication of research. [Christopher Craig]
AES (advanced encryption standard) proposals. [Matt Moyer]
Cryptography via iterated dynamical systems. Present these or related proposals and evaluate: do they seem useful (secure, efficient)? [Bryan Harris]
Commercial mechanisms for controlled release of information (e.g. audio and video files). E.g. Intertrust. How do the mechanisms work; can you crack them. (Will people be able to crack them for less than the purchase cost?)
Digital cash proposals: how do they work, how secure are they, and why haven't the companies doing this succeeded yet. Smartcards. [Keshav Attrey, Zahid Khan & James Ross]
Shor's algorithm for factoring and discrete logarithms on a quantum computer. [Anthony Baker & David Sitton]