TCS / Studies / T-79.515 Cryptography: Special Topics
Helsinki University of Technology, 
     Laboratory for Theoretical Computer Science

T-79.515 Cryptography: Special Topics (2-6 cr)

Spring 2002: Pairing-based Cryptography

Previous years: [Spring 2002]

[Course Description] [General Information] [Seminars] [Other Interesting Stuff] [TOPI]

New: the schedule for spring 2004 has been fixed. The seminar is on Tuesdays, 16-18, at T4. The next description corresponds to the year 2003.

This is a graduate-level (although motivated undergraduate students are welcome) seminar on cryptography. Subjects covered this year are: pairing-based cryptography.

Simply put, pairing is an efficiently computable bilinear mapping. If a pairing exists on some algebraic structure, the Decisional Diffie-Hellman problem on this structure will be easy. In some specific cases (like supersingular elliptic curves) this gives raise to a situation where decisional Diffie-Hellman is easy, but computational Diffie-Hellman is hard. Based on this disparity, cryptographers have lately proposed (literarily) many interesting cryptographic protocols that are considerably more efficient than the their previous counterparts. Due to that, study of pairings has been one of the most active branches of cryptography during the last two or three years. Researchers have proposed efficient identity-based encryption schemes and signature schemes, signature schemes, aggregate signature schemes, three-party key agreement protocols, etc. cryptographic protocols. We are going to base the seminar on Menezes's tutorial slides, and talk about one to three different papers during every seminar.


General Information

  • Seminars lead by Prof. Helger Lipmaa: Tuesday 16-18, room/hall TB353. First seminar: 14.01.2003.
  • Course material:
    Menezes's tutorial (copies of slides).
    Original research papers (see ``The Pairing-Based Crypto Lounge'' by Paulo Barreto).
  • In order to pass the course one has to
    • do at least one seminar presentation
    • be an opponent of at least one presentation by others
    (By doing more than one presentations or more than one reviews it is possible to get more credits.)

    To graduate, every student must submit his or her survey timely, give a good presentation, be able to answer to the discussions, and be a constructive and friendly opponent (In particular, propose a fair grade for the presenter). The purpose of review and feedback is to improve the quality of the work. Grading will also based on the participation during discussion providing constructive feedback to others.

  • Newsgroup: none
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Course Organization

During most of the seminars, one student will present an about 60 minutes long presentation and a written survey of 5-7 pages on some subject, followed by short discussions, so that every seminar will take approximately 90 minutes. Survey and presentation slides will be made available on the web. The survey must be available to the tutor one week before the presentation. (The only possible exception is the first presenter.)

Every student also gets an opponent, who will given the survey before the presentation. The opponent has, for the presentation, to prepare a 2-2.5 page resumé (that should be made available to the presenter and to the responsible teacher two days before the presentation; the resumé will also be made available on the web), and lead discussions with the presenter. If necessary, the presenter must revise his or her survey, based on these remarks, within one week; the revised version will then be put on the web. Back to menu.


Seminar notes

(Presentations and short overviews; reviews --- all by students)

Both surveys and reviews are expected to be typeset in LaTeX, using the standard fonts and fontsizes. Please submit both the LaTeX source file and a .pdf or .ps version.

For formatting your survey please use this survey by Petteri Kaski (from seminar in 2001) as an example.

  1. Seminar 1: Bilinear Pairings (Sven Laur, slides, 28.01.03) Opponent: Johan Wallén (review)
  2. Seminar 2: Short Signature Schemes (Johan Wallén, slides 04.02.03) Opponent: Tatiana Issaeva (review)
  3. ID-Based Cryptography (Tatiana Issaeva, slides, 11.02.03) Opponent: Alexey Vyskubov (review)
  4. ID-Based Signatures (Alexey Vyskubov, slides, 18.02.03) Opponent: Sven Laur (review)
  5. Aggregate Signatures (Tatiana Issaeva, slides, 18.03.03) Opponent: Johan Wallén (review)
  6. Some ID-PKC signcryption schemes (Lauri Tarkkala, slides, 25.03.03) Opponent: Sven Laur (review)
  7. Weil Pairings (Alexey Vyskubov, slides, 01.04.03) Opponent: ?
  8. Tate Pairings (Sven Laur, slides, 15.04.03) Opponent: ?
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Latest update: 22 January 2007.