Summer 2010

Lattices are of great importance in the design and the analysis of cryptographic algorithms. The most important algorithm is the so called lattice basis reduction, which was invented by Lenstra, Lenstra and Lovasz in 1982 and revolutionized computational aspects of "the geometry of numbers", leading to breakthroughs in fields like computer algebra, cryptography and algorithmic number theory.
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This course is about various aspects of security in the internet. In the first part we deal with secure connections, whereas the second part considers electronic voting schemes involving further tasks.

• Who can read my email?
• How do I know that eBay is eBay, or amazon is amazon?
• What is the public key of Angela Merkel? Where do I get it and how do I verify that ...

 

Each semester this seminar tries to dig deep into one specific topic within the wide area of cryptography and related subjects.  This subject is chosen short before the start (though ideas may be around much earlier). This semester's topic is Symmetric mobile cryptography We will start with a discussion of the algorithms used for securing communication with mobile phones and the most successful attacks. We will consider GSM and UMTS.

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