CSCI 5440: Cryptography

The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Fall 2020

• Lectures Mon 9.30-11.15 and Tue 10.30-11.15 in ERB 404 and over zoom
• Instructor Andrej Bogdanov, andrejb (a) cse.cuhk.edu.hk, SHB 926
• Office hours Fri 2-4 (or by appointment)

Recent Announcements

• 10 Dec Please turn in your final report by the end of Friday. Try to incorporate the feedback from your presentation.
• 28 Aug Here is the recurring link for the online lectures.

Course Description

Cryptography allows us to achieve secure and private communication and computation in insecure environments. We will study various settings of interest in which these seemingly impossible objectives can be achieved (and some where they cannot). This year's version will attempt to address the gap between the theory and practice of cryptography.

Lectures

	date	topic	notes
1	Sep 7 Sep 8	Secret sharing and perfectly secure encryption	pdf ✎
2	Sep 14 Sep 15	Pseudorandomness and private-key encryption	pdf ✎
3	Sep 21 Sep 22	Pseudorandom functions and chosen plaintext attacks	pdf ✎
4	Sep 28 Sep 29	Public-key encryption, obfuscation, DDH and LWE	pdf ✎
5	Oct 5 Oct 6	Identification schemes	pdf ✎
6	Oct 12 Oct 13	Authentication, signatures, hashing, random oracles	pdf ✎
7	Oct 19 Oct 20	Two-party computation, oblivious transfer, garbled circuits	pdf ✎
	Oct 26	Chung Yeung festival
8	Oct 27 Nov 2	Commitments, zero-knowledge	pdf ✎
9	Nov 3 Nov 9	Proofs of knowledge, fairness, multiparty computation	pdf ✎
10	Nov 10 Nov 16	Homomorphic encryption, impossibility of obfuscation	pdf ✎
11	Nov 17 Nov 23	Succinct proofs	pdf ✎
12	Nov 24 Nov 30	Quantum computing and cryptography	pdf ✎
	Dec 1 Dec 8-9	Wrap-up Project presentations

Homeworks and Exams

• Homework 1 (out: Sep 21 | in: Sep 29)
• Homework 2 (out: Oct 12 | in: Oct 20)
• Midterm exam (out: Oct 26 | in: Nov 3)
• Homework 3 (out: Nov 16 | in: Nov 24)

Course Information

• Prerequisites Probability and algorithms.
• Grading and homeworks Your grade will be determined from homeworks (30%), a take-home midterm exam (30%), and a final project (40%). Three homeworks will be issued throughout the semester. You are encouraged to collaborate on the homeworks as long as you write up your own solutions.
• Discussion Please join the CSCI 5440 piazza forum. You can also use it to look for homework collaborators and project partners.
• Final project For your final project you will be expected to do some independent reading, a presentation in class, and a short report.

References

Notes will be provided for every lecture. The following references cover some of the topics in more detail.

• Jonathan Katz and Yehuda Lindell. Introduction to Modern Cryptography. Chapman & Hall / CRC, 2007.
• Oded Goldreich. Foundations of Cryptography, volume 1: Basic Tools. Cambridge University Press, 2001.
• Oded Goldreich. Foundations of Cryptography, volume 2: Basic Applications. Cambridge University Press, 2004.
• Ronald Cramer, Ivan Damgard, and Jesper Buus Nielsen. Secure multiparty computation and secret sharing. Cambridge University Press, 2015.
• Yehuda Lindell (editor), Tutorials on the Foundations of Cryptography.
• Rafael Pass and abhi shelat. A course in cryptography.
• Dan Boneh and Victor Shoup. A graduate course in applied cryptography.