6.876 Advanced Topics in Cryptography
Cryptographic Proofs (Fall 2019)
Lecturer: Alex Lombardi
Welcome! This is the course homepage for the Fall 2019 iteration of 6.876 (Advanced Topics in Cryptography).
Course Title: Cryptographic Proofs
Location and Time: Friday 1-4pm in Room 36-112
Course Head: Professor Vinod Vaikuntanathan
Lecturer: Alex Lombardi (contact)
Course Description: The notion of a cryptographic proof — an interactive process through which you can “prove” that a statement is true while maintaining some level of secrecy and/or efficiency — is central to modern cryptography. We will begin with the classical notion of a zero-knowledge interactive proof and explore the theory surrounding it, including exciting recent work on zero-knowledge and adjacent topics.
Course Requirements
Scribe Notes: Each student should write up scribe notes (in LaTeX) for one lecture. These notes will be posted on the course website.
Reading Project: By the end of the semester, each student should read a paper (or perhaps two related papers) and write an exposition of the results of the paper(s). A list of papers for potential projects is posted below (although you are more than welcome to pick papers that are not on the list).
Inspiration
This course focused on similar topics to those of Nir Bitansky's Spring 2019 seminar on zero-knowledge.