General
Remote teaching and current schedule:
Teaching takes place remotely via Zoom. Each Monday morning at 9:45, we publish the Zoom link for the meeting. On Mondays, we first have an exercise session from 10:00 - 10:45, then lecture from 10:45 - 11:30. 1 hour lunch break. Then, lecture from 12:30 - 13:15 and exercise from 13:15 - 14:00.
The lecture is pre-recorded, and the goal of the lecture slot is to watch it together and ask questions. You can also ask questions in the MyCourses Forum throughout the week:
https://mycourses.aalto.fi/mod/forum/index.php?id=25715
Moreover, you can contact me via eMail: chris.brzuska@aalto.fi
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We cover two different areas of cryptography in teaching period III and teaching period IV, as described below. The main path through this course is via lectures and exercises. There will be 5 exercise sheets per period, with 4 points each. You need 25 points to pass the course, and in each of the two periods, you need at least 10 points.
Alternative path through the course: If you are only interested in one of the two areas, you can contact Chris before January 15. We plan to offer alternative reading groups for those who prefer to study only one of the two areas. I.e., we will choose, read and discuss interesting papers together. You can make suggestions for papers that you would be particularly interested in reading.
Independent Assignments: If you would like to, you can also take part in the both pathes. In that case, the reading group will be treated as an independent assignment. If you are interested, contact Chris before January 15.
Topics of the main path:
Teaching Period III:
We cover computational hardness as a foundation of cryptography. What is the connection between NP-hardness and one-way functions? If I have one-way functions, what can I build? If there are no one-way functions, can I still have very useful cryptography? (The answer is no.) What are zero-knowledge proofs?
Teaching Period IV:
We will study the security of the TLS 1.3 Handshake protocol and how to prove its security.