Cryptography

Computer Science 6830
Cornell University
Spring 2017

Instructor: Rafael Pass

Time: W 4.45-7.15
Place: Gates 405 (Ithaca), Touchdown (NYC)
Course Web page: http://www.cs.cornell.edu/courses/cs6830/2017sp/

 

Office Hours: by appointment.

Course Admin: Vasilis Drimalitis <vd88@cornell.edu>

 

Overview

 

The modern study of cryptography investigates techniques for facilitating interactions between distrustful entities. In our connected society, such techniques have become indispensable---enabling, for instance, automated teller machines, secure wireless networks, internet banking, satellite radio/television and more.

 

In this course we introduce some of the fundamental concepts of this study. Emphasis will be placed on the foundations of cryptography and in particular on precise definitions and proof techniques.

 

Topics include: one-way functions, encryption, signatures, pseudo-random number generation, zero-knowledge and basic protocols.

 

Note: This will be a theory course. You will be expected to read and write formal definitions and mathematical proofs. This is not a course in security: you will not learn how to secure your system. Cryptography is only one (important) part of security. We will not study cryptographic acronyms or all cryptographic protocols in use today. Rather we focus on some of the fundamental design paradigms and on notions that will allow you to critically evaluate cryptographic protocols.

 

Prerequisites

 

General ease with algorithms and elementary probability theory, maturity with mathematical proofs (to be able to read and write mathematical proofs)

 

Course Administration

 

We are using the course management system, CMS.  Please login to http://cms.csuglab.cornell.edu/ and check whether you are registered. There will be a list of courses you are registered for, and CS 6830 should be one of them.  If not, please send your full name and Cornell netid to Vasilis so he can register you.  You can check your grades and submit homework in CMS. 

 

Grading

 

There will be roughly 4-5 homeworks. The grade will be based on homework assignments and class participation.

 

Homework Policy

 

You are free to collaborate with other students on the homework, but you must turn in your own individually written solution and you must specify the names of your collaborators. Additionally, you may make use of published material, provided that you acknowledge all sources used. Note that it is a violation of this policy to submit a problem solution that you are unable to explain orally to me. Typed problem sets are strongly preferred.

 

Homework 1 is due on Feb 8.

G-writer ciphertext are found here: zip

 

You will need the following notation and preliminaries.

 

Reading  

 

Lecture notes covering a large fraction of the course can be found here.

 

(Background material on discrete math from CS 2800 can be found here.)

 

There is no required textbook for the course. However, most of the topics we will cover can be found in the following excellent reference.

 

• Oded Goldreich. Foundations of Cryptography. This is a very comprehensive treatment of the theoretical foundations of cryptography. Volume I contains most of the material we will cover in class. Other topics such as encryption, signatures and secure computation are in Volume II.

 

Topics Outline (subject to change)

 

• Introduction:
1. Introduction and Overview.
2. Information Theoretic Security.
   Shannon’s Definition of security. One-time Pads. Limitations of the Information Theoretic Approach.

 

• Computational Hardness and One-wayness:
1. One-way Functions and Computationally bounded adversaries.
   Randomized Efficient Algorithms. One-way functions (OWF).
   Collections of OWFs.
2. Number Theory and Candidate One-way functions/permutations and trapdoor permutations.
3. Weak and Strong OWFs. Hardness Amplification.

 

• Indistinguishability, Randomness and Pseudorandomness:
1. Computational Indistinguishability and Pseudorandom Generators (PRG) and Functions (PRF).
   Definitions of Computational Indistinguishability and Pseudorandomness.

Hard-core bits. Constructions of a PRGs and PRFs.

2. Hard-core bits from any one-way function.
   The Goldreich-Levin Theorem.
3. Imperfect Randomness, and Hardness v.s. Randomness.
   Impossibility of deterministic extraction.
   Universal Hashfunctions and seeded extractors.
   PRG and Derandomization of BPP.
4. Private-Key Encryption.
   Definitions and Constructions
5. Public-Key Encryption.
   Definitions and Constructions.

 

• Zero-Knowledge:
1. Semantical Security:

Zero knowledge-based definitions of encryption. Equivalence with indistinguishability-based definitions.

2. Zero-Knowledge Proofs:
   Definitions and construction of ZK proofs for Graph-Isomorphism and Graph 3-coloring.
3. Witness Indistinguishability

Constant-round ZK.

• Applications:
1. Authentication:
1. Digital Signatures.
   Definitions and Constructions
2. Hash functions.
3. Message Authentication Codes.
4. Zero Knowledge-based Authentication.

1.     Computing on Secret Inputs:

1. Secret Sharing.
2. Secure Computation.
   Oblivious Transfer.
   General secure computation. 
3. Fully Homomorphic Encryption.

2.     Composability:

1.     Composability of Encryption schemes.
Chosen challenge-text, Chosen plain-text, Chosen cipher-text 1 and 2 (CCA1, CCA2).
Malleability.

2.     Composability of Zero-Knowledge proofs.

3.     Program Obfuscation

1.     Impossibility of Virtual Black-box Obfuscation

2.     Indistinguishability Obfuscation and Applications

4.     Bitcoin and Proof-of-Work Based Ledgers

1.     Proofs of Work

2.     The Blockchain protocol

 

 

Related Courses

• CS 513: System Security. This course discusses security and survivability for computers and communications networks. The course will include discussions of policy issues (e.g. the national debates on cryptography policy) as well as the discussions of the technical alternatives for implementing the properties that comprise "trustworthiness" in a computing system. Mechanisms for authorization and authentication as well as cryptographic protocols will be covered.
• CS 6810: Theory of Computation This course gives an advanced treatment of theory of computation, computational-complexity theory, and other topics in computing theory.
• CS 4830: Introduction Cryptography. This course is an undergraduate introductory course to cryptography.
• CS 7832: Crypto breakfast. This course is a cryptography reading group focusing on advanced topics.