CS 555 Syllabus

(Spring 2004)


   

Introduction

  • Concepts and principles of crypography: security services, attacks and mechanisms. 
  • Classical cryptographic systems: shift cipher, Vigenere and Vernam ciphers, Jefferson wheel cipher and the Enigma machine.    

Basic Secret Key Encryption  (security against eavesdropping)

  • Information theoretic security. One time pad. Perfect secrecy. Stream ciphers. RC4.    
  • Feistel networks. DES. Using block ciphers (basic modes of operation).
  • Strengthening DES: DESX and 3DES.
  • Attacks on block ciphers: Time-space tradeoffs, Differential & Linear cryptanalysis, Meet-in-the-middle.
  • The AES cipher.  
  • Semantic security. Pseudo Random Permutations. Luby-Rackoff. Analysis of CBC mode.   

Message Integrity (Hashing)

  • Non keyed hash functions.  Motivation and applications. 
  • Merkle-Damgard and other constructions.  
  • Message Authentication Codes (MAC).   Applications.  
  • Constructions: CBC-MAC, HMAC.  

Public Key Encryption

  • Arithmetic modulo primes. Algorithms: bignum arithmetic, repeated squaring. 
  • Cryptography using arithmetic modulo primes:  Discrete log. Diffie-Hellman Key Exchange. 
    ElGamal encryption. Random self reductions. 
  • Arithmetic modulo composites. 
  • RSA and Rabin encryption.  PKCS1 vs. OAEP vs. OAEP+.   
  • Vulnerabilities: Unpadded RSA is insecure. Small private key. 
    Random padding. Timing attacks.  Fault attacks. 

Digital Signatures

  • Definition of secure signature schemes. Lamport and Merkle schemes.     
  • How to sign using RSA. Brief overview of the Digital Signature Standard (DSS) and ElGamal.    

Other Topics

  • Blind signatures. Group signatures.
  • Authentication protocols.
  • Key management: two-party key exchange and group key management protocols.
  • Hybrid encryption schemes.
  • Applications: fair exchange, certified email, e-cash.
  • Zero-knowledge proofs.
  • Commitment schemes
  • Identity-Based Encription

 


Last update: August 16, 2004 by Dan Boneh