Cryptography and Security

Instructor: Prof. Ronen Gradwohl

Monday: cryptography, security, Internet security.

Wednesday: secure protocols, voting, privacy.

Discussion Questions:

• What problem is the Diffie-Hellman key exchange trying to solve?
• What are the key parts of the Diffie-Hellman key exchange?
• What is the problem that the RSA algorithm is trying to solve?
• Why is encryption important for society?

• What are key properties the clean elections of Bismark and Farivar?
• What does it mean for a protocol to be zero knowledge? How can you be sure that a protocol is zero knowledge?
• What are some real-life uses for zero knowledge proofs?
• How is zero knowledge related to clean elections?
• What is the point of repeating the zero-knowledge test? What is the point of replacing a sequence of tests with a single test?
• Can you describe how one of the proposed clean election systems works? What are its good properties?
• What are some example application domains where there is a conflict between functionality and privacy?
• Why do many attempts to anonymous data before it is released to the public ultimately fail?
• What is differential privacy and how does it attempt to address privacy, while permitting statistical studies?