Notation
wnnp: with non negligible probability. p assumed to be prime.
Security with auxiliary input: Security is not broken even if functions of SK are revealed.
Themes
Communication in the presence of an adversary. Encryption; efficiency of encryption: important due to pervasive communication; Batch verification. Authentication. Key distribution. Access control. Crypto-analysis: Break hardness assumptions used in cryptography. Make better proofs of security.
Proving the security of protocols. Code obfuscation: Hide your intent. 0 knowledge proofs.
Oblivious transfer: evaluate a function on many agents’ sercrets, without anyone knowing anyone’s secret.
Network protocol security
The security vs functionality tension. How do you design and prove the security of protocols for various purposes, wrt various attacks?
Applications
Mainly useful for secretive corporations, governments and citizens who care for privacy.
Characterization of research effort
General strategy
Finding scenarios with security problems. Informal/ creative thought, understand threat model, formalize security definition, describe solution, prove security using widely accepted assumption.
Typical proof: assume some attacker A can break security; then given access to A, you make an algorithm to violate assumption. Easy to make mistake: Unless you write down proof in complete detail, implicit unwarranted assumptions about A creep in: Use propositional logic to state the thing to be proved.