Seminar on

Cryptographic

Protocols

Fall 2020

When: Sundays 9-11, Where: A zoom link will be shared through the mailing list.

About the seminar: Cryptographic protocols allow parties to communicate and engage in collaborative computation when they do not trust each other. The seminar will touch general protocols for multi-party computation, as well as protocols targeted at specific objectives, such as zero knowledge and non-malleability. We will cover some classical protocols as well as state-of-the-art protocols, with focus on influential ideas that have shaped this research area.

Prerequisites: the seminar targets students who have taken the foundations of cryptography graduate course (0368.4162). If you haven't taken the course, and would still like to join the seminar contact Nir. Lecture notes from the course can be found here.

Requirements: Lectures will be mostly given by the students who will be required to:

Select a topic and read the relevant materials.
Prepare a lecture using slides or zoom whiteboard.
Meet with Nir on Wednesday before your talk to go over the lecture and make any required changes.
Attend lectures (you can miss at most two lectures).

Requirements: The final grade will be based on the students' lectures and participation throughout the semester.

We will post on the webpage slides/notes after the lectures. If you plan to give a whiteboard talk make sure to prepare readable notes (preferably in Latex).

List of possible talks and linked papers (classified according to topics):

Notes:

The suggested papers are "easy to present samples" from each topic. Most of them have a large body of work behind them. If you're curious, ask me for references.
You are welcome to suggest other topics/papers.
The papers don't have to be presented in the order in which they appear.