CS 851/551 
Cryptography Applications Bistro
evans@virginia.edu

CS551/851
CRyptography
Applications
Bistro
Seminar, Spring 2004

Coordinator: David Evans

Meeting Times: Tenatively scheduled for Tuesdays and Thursdays, 5:30-6:45pm in Olsson 228E. If students selected for the class are unable to meet at those times, we will consider rescheduling the seminar.

Web Page: http://www.cs.virginia.edu/crab


Image from Museum Victoria

Course Description: This course will focus on applications of cryptography to problems such as digital rights management, voting, micropayments, sensor networks, anonymous publishing, grid computing, medical privacy, identity and authentication (of things, humans and crustaceans). The course will be run as a graduate seminar with students reading research papers and leading discussions. Students willl be expected to carry out a project that is of publishable quality.

Expected Background: Students should have a good understanding on basic cryptographic primitives such as one-way hash functions, symmetric encryption and public-key cryptography. Students should have some familiarity with cryptographic protocols.

Selection: To provide a conducive seminar environment, class size will be limited to about ten people. Both graduate and undergraduate students will be welcome in the class. Students will be selected for the class based on its expected value to the student and the student's expected contribution to the class. To increase your chances for selection do one or both of these:

  1. Send me a short description of research work you have done or are doing related to cryptography
  2. Describe a solution to the counterfeiting problem faced by the Yang Cheng Lake crab producers in Wall Street Journal article, Not All Hairy Crabs Are Created Equal, available at http://www.cs.virginia.edu/crab/wsj.html. A good solution will include a clear and precise description of the system requirements (both functional and security) and explain how your proposed solution satisfies those requirements. Unlike the solution hinted at in the end of the article, your solution should probably not involve any cooperation with the nuclear industry, but it should involve cryptography.
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