An Introduction to Modern Cryptography

Student Colloquium

Speaker: Hector Hougaard

Abstract

Say you and your best friend want to communicate about going out but you do not want your mom to overhear you even though she is in the same room... what to do? Encrypt your message of course! Well, nowadays you can just send a text message, but then the NSA might eavesdrop on the conversation and make the party super boring by turning up... what to do? Encrypt your text message of course! But what does it mean to encrypt and how do we know that the NSA won't just crack the code and read it anyway? All this and more will be revealed in the following student colloquium.

The colloquium will give a detailed introduction to modern cryptography with a focus on breaching the techniques and ideas behind what we today consider "secure" encryption.

Needed background: None, but it will be beneficial to have seen probability theory and a least one contradiction proof.

There will be sandwiches for the first 30 attendants.