Se­mi­nar: Cur­rent Trends in Cryp­to­gra­phy

Modern cryptography is much more than just TLS connections. Recently, more and more cryptographic technologies are making their way into practice, such as zero-knowledge proofs and secure multi-party computation. Cryptography is also an integral part of the hype machine that is blockchain technology. Our research group is also working on making cryptography secure against quantum computers and on enabling more privacy in our lives. 
There are many more current trends and there are a lot of cool ideas being developed in both research and practice. So many, in fact, that it is hard to keep up-to-date on everything. This is where this seminar comes in: with your help, we want to better understand current trends, and integrate them into our work. 

The seminar will have topics that are theoretical, ones that are practical, and some that mix both. Some topics are meant for a single participant. We also explicitly have some topics meant for a team of two, where both participants work on a common project. For example, one participant could focus on implementing and benchmarking a cryptographic scheme and the other one could focus on proving it secure mathematically.

Prerequisites

Prior knowledge in cryptography or IT security is recommended. 

Questions

Feel free to contact Jan if you have any questions or concerns about this seminar.

Se­mi­nar ele­ments

In the seminar, we will have:

  • A poster session (around 4 weeks in)
    • Present your seminar topic and your ideas in an informal way (like a scientific conference poster session). You'll get early feedback and you get to learn something about the other students' topics.
  • A presentation (around 10 weeks in)
    • Present your full results with a scientific talk (like a scientific conference talk).
  • An essay (deadline: last week before semester break)
    • Write up your results formally (like a scientific research paper).
  • Intermediate meetings (roughly every two weeks between deadlines). 
    • A place to talk about, for example, project management, LaTeX issues, writing tips, or anything else that may be helpful. We want to design these meetings with respect to your ideas and wishes.

Concrete dates will be available in PANDA.