Theme: Computer Security
Lecture: Understanding Cryptography: From Caesar to Public-Key

Thursday 3 March

15:30 - 16:25

Lecture 4

Understanding Cryptography: From Caesar to Public-Key

Nicola Chiapolini
Universität Zürich - Switzerland

Presentation
In this lecture we start by explaining a selection of simple cryptographic algorithms as well as the methods to attack them. We then try and show how these basic algorithms evolved over time into the modern ones and give simple examples of how he recent algorithms work.

As a illustration, we will  turn to one of the most challenging  exercise given at CSC2010 in the "Writing Secure software" class (that is the "HTML-riddle problem" ) in order to show how this knowledge can to solve the problem posed.

Benefits
After this lecture, the attendees should not only understand how modern cryptographic algorithms developed, but also master their basic principles.

Audience
This lecture targets everyone who wants to understand what is going on when using encryption or who is  interested in riddles..

 Pre-requisite
This lecture can be followed by anyone. The ability to understand simple programs will help nevertheless.