Senior Capstone I & II

Cryptography & Cryptocurrencies

CSc 59866/7: Fall 2020–Spring 2021

The City College of CUNY
Department of Computer Science

Instructor: Nelly Fazio
Email: fazio AT cs DOT ccny DOT cuny DOT edu

Fall 2020:
Lectures: Wednesdays, 10:00am–12:30pm, Online
Office hours: Tuesdays, 2:00pm–3:00pm, Online

Spring 2021:
Class Meetings: Tuesdays/Thursdays, 9:30am–10:45am, Online
Office hours: Thursdays, 11:00am–12:00pm, Online

Course Description

In this two-semester course, students are grouped into teams to work on projects of practical importance in cryptography. The first semester starts by covering the basic principles and practices of information security. Teams will pick a topic for their project, based on their interests and on discussions with the instructor. After reading a selection of papers on the chosen topic, each group will narrow down their focus and outline a working plan for the design, development, testing, evaluation, and deployment of their project. Teams will demonstrate their understanding of the principles and algorithms of their chosen area in a class presentation, and will prepare a project proposals with specific deliverables and milestones for the completion of their software project. The second semester will focus on the implementation of the proposed projects.

A list of possible topics and suggestions for specific project will be discussed in class, however teams are welcome to propose other papers and topics. Each group should discuss the final choice of the topic and set of papers with the instructor.

PRE/COREQ: Senior year students only.

Course Objectives

Successful completion of this course trains the students in the following directions:

how to approach moderately large software projects and work effectively in teams;
analyze, understand, and evaluate the security of computer systems;
gain insights on the use of cryptography to build security and privacy properties into real-world applications;
gain expository and presentational skills to prepare and deliver technical reports.

List of Topics (tentative)

Introduction to Cryptography
- Information security goals
  - Data secrecy. Data integrity. Data origin.
- Basic primitives
  - One-way functions. Cryptographic hash functions. Block ciphers.
- Symmetric primitives
  - Symmetric encryption. Message authentication codes (MACs).
- Public-key primitives
  - Asymmetric encryption. Digital signatures.
- Cryptographic protocols
  - Key exchange. Key distribution. Authentication.
Advanced Topics
- Identification schemes. Commitment schemes. Secret sharing schemes. Threshold encryption schemes. Threshold signature schemes
Cryptocurrencies
- Cryptographic approaches to money before Bitcoin
- The Bitcoin revolution
- The cryptocurrency ecosystem
- Decentralized applications /"Smart contracts"

Textbook

There is no required textbook.

Recommended textbook:

A Course in Cryptography.
R. Pass and A. Shelat
Available on-line
Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency Technologies: A Comprehensive Introduction.
Arvind Narayanan, Joseph Bonneau, Edward Felten, Andrew Miller, Steven Goldfeder

Grading (Fall 2020)

10%: Class attendance & participation
40%: Homework
50%: Project Report & Presentation

NOTE: Late assignment will not be accepted.

Grading (Spring 2021)

40%: Project implementation
40%: Project report
20%: Project presentation (slides and demo)