General Catalog 2023-24

Lecture, four hours; discussion, two hours; outside study, six hours. Preparation: knowledge of basic probability theory. Enforced requisite: course 180. Introduction to cryptography, computer security, and basic concepts and techniques. Topics include notions of hardness, one-way functions, hard-core bits, pseudorandom generators, pseudorandom functions and pseudorandom permutations, semantic security, public-key and private-key encryption, key-agreement, homomorphic encryption, private information retrieval and voting protocols, message authentication, digital signatures, interactive proofs, zero-knowledge proofs, collision-resistant hash functions, commitment protocols, and two-party secure computation with static security. Letter grading.