Summer 2008

This course deals with classical methods of cryptography and cryptanalysis. This starts with simple substitutions and the Vigenère cipher, broken by Kasiski's method. Frequency analysis is developed into Shannon's theory of entropy. The German cipher machine Enigma from the Second World War is explained, with the breaks by Polish and British cryptanalysts, which changed the course of the war. The world's first electronic computer Colossus was invented as a tool for breaking another German system, the Geheimschreiber.

The electronic health card shall give everybody the opportunity to carry a lot of health related information with you. First, it'll contain administrative information, like your name and your health insurance company. Later, also recipies will be carried electronically using this card. In a next step, emergency information like your blood group, allergies may be stored. The ultimate goal ...

A hash function is a deterministic method of generating from an arbitrary bit string a (relatively) small bit string that serves as a fingerprint of the data.
Almost every cryptographic algorithm nowadays uses such fingerprints, and the properties of the underlying hash functions are essential for the security analysis of the algorithm. In the seminar we will have talks on the various ...

This semester's seminar probably focusses again on elliptic curves. Other option are: Coding theory, Topics from recent crypto conferences, ...  We will decide on the topic in the first meeting.

The seminar discusses subjects of current interest in computer security. Some of the lectures will be given by invited guests.

The seminar discusses subjects of the current interest in computing and cryptography. Some of the lectures will be given by invited guests.