Spring 2005

Unless indicated otherwise, the CryptoSeminar is being held in the Atwater Kent building on the WPI Worcester campus. The Atwater Kent building is at the intersection of Salisbury Street and the extension of West Street (labeled "Private Way"). See directions to campus.

The talks are 30-45 minutes long and are open to everyone.

Refreshments are usually being served 15 minutes before the talk. There is no fee and no formal registration. If you are attending a Seminar for the first time, a short e-mail to Profs. Berk Sunar or Bill Martin, saying that you would like to attend, would be appreciated.

How to Fool an Unbounded Adversary with a Short Key

Alexander Russell, University of Connecticut
Wednesday, April 27, 2005, 4pm, Atwater Kent Labs, WPI, Room 233

Abstract

We consider the symmetric encryption problem which manifests when two parties must securely transmit a message m with a short shared secret key. As we permit arbitrarily powerful adversaries, any encryption scheme must leak information about m---the mutual information between m and its ciphertext cannot be zero. Despite this, we present a family of encryption schemes which guarantee that for any message space in {0,1}^n with minimum entropy n - t and for any Boolean function h:{0,1}^n --> {0,1}, no adversary can predict h(m) from the ciphertext of m with more than 1/n^{\omega(1)} advantage; this is achieved with keys of length t + \omega(log n). In general, keys of length t + s yield a bound of 2^{-\Theta(s)} on the advantage. These encryption schemes rely on no unproven assumptions and can be implemented efficiently.

An Introduction to Computational Commutative Algebra and Its Applications

John Little, Holy Cross College, Worcester
Friday, January 14, 2005, 11am, Stratton Hall, WPI, Room 203

Abstract

Computational commutative algebra deals with algorithmic approaches to problems concerning ideals in rings of polynomials in several variables and related rings, as well as quotient rings, modules, and other related structures. One perhaps surprising aspect of the subject is its wide applicability. In this talk, we will give a concrete introduction to some of the main tools and an application to a question from the design of statistical experiments.

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Last modified: Nov 14, 2006, 19:20 EST