CS 598 DK

Subject offerings of new and developing areas of knowledge in computer science intended to augment the existing curriculum. See Class Schedule or departmental course information for topics and prerequisites. Course Information: May be repeated in the same or separate terms if topics vary.

Cryptography, that started as the study of secret communication, has undergone a major revolution in the last few years. It now helps us realize a variety of seemingly impossible tasks: from allowing computations on secret data without revealing the data itself, to offloading computation to untrusted clients while maintaining verifiable results, and even making programs unintelligible while preserving functionality. This course will cover a selection of such cutting-edge topics in modern cryptography. We will understand how an adversary that breaks advanced protocols can be transformed into an adversary that contradicts a basic assumption such as the hardness of factoring. Our focus will be on understanding key ideas in cryptography research published over the last few years, and identifying new directions and problems for the future. This is a seminar course in Cryptography. Students will be expected to read and discuss research papers in the second part of the course.