CMSC 858K --- Advanced Topics in Theory of Computing: Cryptography
Spring 2003
Announcements
Announcement: Class will be cancelled on Tuesday, May 6.
Reminder: The final exam will be given on Tuesday, May 13, during the last class of the semester (and not during finals week).
Email me if you are interested in being added to the mailing list for the weekly crypto reading group.
Course Outline
This course will be an introductory graduate-level course in cryptography with a
focus on definitions, theoretical foundations, and rigorous proofs of security.
No programming will be required.
Topics to be covered will depend to some extent upon the interests of the students, and may include: symmetric-key encryption and message authentication, public-key encryption and digital signatures, elliptic curve cryptography, electronic cash, electronic voting, zero-knowledge, and secure multi-party computation.
In addition to a textbook, readings will be assigned from recent papers in the field.
Please note that this is a theory course.
We will not be very concerned with "practicality", "efficiency", or aspects of implementation.
In fact, only about 1/3 of the course will focus on schemes that are currently used in practice.
The student interested in these issues should consider taking CSMC 456 - Introduction to Cryptography or CMSC 414 - Network Security instead.
No previous knowledge of cryptography will be assumed.
In particular, it will not be assumed that students have taken CMSC 456.
On the other hand, the class will be easier for those who have had some prior exposure to cryptography (for example, I will not spend a lot of time motivating the various concepts or definitions), and students who take only this course will miss out on issues covered in CMSC 456 that will not be covered here.
I strongly recommend that students check out my lecture notes for CMSC 456; this will give an idea of the flavor of material to be presented and will also be useful background reading for this course.
General Information
- Instructor: Jonathan Katz (jkatz AT cs). Office: 3225 AV Williams. Office hours: Tuesday 11-12.
- Teaching Assistant: Greg Bard (bardg@cs.umd.edu, gregory.bard@ieee.org). Office: AV Williams 3264. Office hours: Thursday 1:15 - 2:30.
- The class meets Tuesday and Thursday from 9:30 - 10:45 in CSIC 3120.
- The midterm will be held Thursday, April 3 (in class).
- The final will be held on Tuesday, May 13 (in class).
- Grading will be based on a midterm exam, a final exam, class participation, and periodic homework assignments.
- Homeworks
- You may collaborate on the homeworks with at most 3 other students, but everyone must write up their own solutions. Also, you should list everyone you worked with on your homework submission.
- You may consult outside references, but you must reference any source you consult. Also, you must write up the solution yourself and understand the answer.
Homeworks
- Homework 1
- Homework 1 (ps | pdf)
- Solutions (ps). See the tex file for the solutions for future reference. (PS: If you find any mistakes, please let me know!)
- Homework 2 --- corrected March 4
- Homework 2 (ps | pdf)
- I am making the tex file available to help those learning Latex.
- Solutions (ps | pdf) (as usual, please let me know if you find any mistakes!)
- Homework 3 --- due March 18
- Homework 4 --- due April 10
- Homework 5 --- due April 29
- Homework 6 --- due May 13