e€ (electronic cash)

Responsible

Joachim von zur Gathen

Lecture

Michael Nüsken

Time & Place

31 March - 5 April 2008
Mon-Fri 9⁰⁰ - 18⁰⁰, Sat 9⁰⁰ - 12³⁰

Start: Monday 31 March at 09⁰⁰ in the b-it Hörsaal.

Exam

Pre-exam meeting: 7 May 2008, 17⁰⁰, Cafeteria/b-it lawn.

The exam will be on 20 May 2008 in the time between 11³⁰ and 14¹⁵ o'clock in b-it Marschallsaal.

There will be a post-exam meeting on NN in the b-it, room NN. At this occasion you can also review our ranking of your exam.

Is it possible to attach money to an email?
So that it cannot be simply copied?
In the internet where everybody can listen?
Can that be secure?

Other than with common electronic transactions electronic money shall behave much more like usual money. We want it to be anonymous, indistinguishable, yet traceable in case of emergency. And one shall not be able to duplicate it.

Topics include

Electronic money: What's that?
Applications
Basics in cryptography
Signatures
Solutions
Do it yourself!

We deal with a completely new kind of money. Many have already bought things in the internet and know various of ways how the article is payed then. Mostly, the money is transferred using one's bank account or via a credit card. Electronic money to the contrary consist only of bits... The right bits at the right moment are money for the recipient. He can deposit it at his bank account just like ordinary money. And the bank will not know where the money comes from. Similarly, the sender's bank will not know where the money goes to. And despite all this you must not be able to copy electronic money and just pay a second time with the very same bits. How to achieve all this shall be worked out in this workshop.

Lecture Notes

The lecture notes now contain all slides, now also the posters, and the programs and logs produced by the course. Further, here are some notes including also number theory and cryptography basics.

Links to up-to-date literature

That's what you found:

Constatin Popescu (2005). A Fair Off-line Electronic Cash System Based on Elliptic Curve Discrete Logarithm Problem (PDF). Studies in informatics and control 14(4).
(Robert Tracz & Konrad Wrona (2001). Fair electronic cash withdrawal and change return for wireless networks. Proceedings of the 1st international workshop on Mobile commerce.)
(Niels Ferguson (1994). Single term off-line coins. Workshop on the theory and application of cryptographic techniques on Advances in cryptology. LNCS.)

Allocation

2+2 SWS, 4 credits.

Media Informatics: Computer and Communication Technology.
Recommendation for University of Bonn - Computer Science: A or A1, respectively.

Language

The course will be held in English.

Sign up

You should have signed up until 17 March by email. In case of problems contact .