MCS 425: Codes and Cryptography (Spring 2020)

Basic Information

• Lectures: Mon-Wed-Fri 11:00-11:50am, Taft Hall 216
• Instructor: Yu Cheng
• Email: yucheng2@uic.edu
• Office Hours: SEO 416, Mon 2-3pm and by appointment
• Grader: Sayan Mukherjee
• Office Hours: MSLC (SES 3rd floor), Tue 11:00am-12:00pm
• Textbook (Required): Introduction to Cryptography with Coding Theory, Second Edition, Wade Trappe and Lawrence Washington
• Fun Reading: Introduction to Modern Cryptography, Second Edition, Jonathan Katz and Yehuda Lindell
• Lecture notes after transition to online teaching.

Homeworks

Warning: the following assignments and due dates are from the past. If you are taking MCS 425 this semester, please refer to the current course webpage.

• Homework 1, due in class on Feb 5 (Wed).
• Homework 2, due in class on Feb 21 (Fri).
• Homework 3, due in class on Feb 28 (Fri).
• Homework 4, due at 11:00am on Apr 15 (Wed).
• Homework 5, due at 11:00am on May 1 (Fri).

Course Project

• Project guidelines.
• Important dates (revised):
• March 25: Decide teams and topics.
• April 17 - April 29: Presentations.
• May 4: Project due.

Schedule

• Week 1-2 (Jan 13), Classical Ciphers:
• Introduction to the Course
• Possible Attacks (Section 1.1.1), Shift Ciphers (Section 2.1)
• Basic Number Theory (Section 3.1), Affine Ciphers (Section 2.2)
• The Vigenère Cipher (Section 2.3)
• Week 3 (Jan 27), Number Theory:
• Extended Euclidean Algorithm (Section 3.2)
• Modular Arithmetic (Section 3.3)
• Chinese Remainder Theorem (Section 3.4)
• Week 4 (Feb 3), Symmetric Key Encryption:
• Modular Exponentiation (Section 3.5)
• Euler’s Theorem (Section 3.6)
• DES (Section 4.1, Section 4.2)
• Week 5 (Feb 10), Public Key Encryption:
• The RSA Algorithm (Section 6.1)
• Primality Testing (Section 6.3)
• Factoring (Section 6.4)
• Week 6 (Feb 17), Public Key Encryption:
• Discrete Logarithms (Section 7.1)
• Diffie-Hellman Key Exchange (Section 7.4), Bit Commitment (Section 7.3)
• ElGamal Encryption (Section 7.5)
• Week 7 (Feb 24), Hash Functions:
• Computing Discrete Logs (Section 7.2)
• Hash Functions (Section 8.1)
• Midterm Review
• Week 8 (Mar 2), Digital Signatures:
* Midterm Exam: March 2nd (Monday), 11:00am - 11:50am.
• Birthday Attacks (Section 8.4)
• RSA Signatures (Section 9.1)
• Week 9 (Mar 9), Security Protocols:
• EIGamal Signatures (Section 9.2), Hashing and Signing (Section 9.3), Birthday Attacks on Signatures (Section 9.4)
• Intruders-in-the-Middle Attacks (Section 10.1), Public Key Infrastructures (PKI) (Section 10.4)
• Secret Splitting (Section 12.1), Threshold Schemes (Section 12.2)
• Week 10-11 (Mar 16): No classes. Spring break.
• Week 12 (Mar 30), Information Theory:
• Zero-Knowledge Proof (Section 14.1)
• Probability Review (Section 15.1), Entropy (Section 15.2)
• Huffman Codes (Section 15.3)
• Week 13-14 (Apr 6), Error Correcting Codes:
• Introduction (Section 18.1)
• Error Correcting Codes (Section 18.2)
• Bounds on General Codes (Section 18.3)
• Linear Codes (Section 18.4)
• Week 15-16 (Apr 20), Project presentations:
• Project presentations
• Final Review
* Final Exam: May 7th (Thursday), 10:30am - 12pm.

Grading

• Homeworks (30%): We will have 5-7 homeworks. You are encouraged to discuss with other students, but you must acknowledge who you worked with and you must write up your solutions independently. Late homeworks are not accepted in general (exceptions with good reasons may be requested in advance).
• Midterm (20%): March 2nd, 11:00am - 11:50am.
• Final (30%): May 7th, 10:30am - 12pm.
• Course project (20%): Explore in depth a topic that we did not cover in class. Write a project report and prepare a presentation.

Disability Policies

Religious Holidays