CSE 701 Fall 2017

CSE 701 Fall 2017: Privacy Enhancing Technologies

General Information

Class Schedule

Mon 2:00pm - 4:00pm, Aug 28 - Dec 8, 2017
Davis Hall 113A

Instructor

Marina Blanton
Email: mblanton at buffalo.edu
Office: 333 Davis Hall
Office hours: Thu TBD or by appointment

Course Objectives

The objectives of this course consist of developing a deep understanding of the available techniques for achieving data privacy and anonymity via technical mechanisms, the ability to reason about them and identify the best tools for a problem in question. The course project additionally includes a research component to demonstrate the ability to build a non-trivial security system or perform a rigorous literature review.

Course Description

This course provides an in-depth treatment of technical mechanisms for protecting data privacy in various contexts. The explored techniques go beyond traditional security tools for protecting data at rest or during transmission and address questions of protecting secrecy of data when it is used in computation, anonymous communications, anonymous authentication, and applications that have anonymity as one of their major goals (including electronic cash, elections, and voting).

Assignments in this course will consist of research paper presentation, reviews of three papers being presented, a course project, and one finals assignment. The course project can take the form of implementing an existing technique, using an existing tool or compiler for an application that requires data protection, designing a new application (must properly demonstrate security), or perform a literature review. Each project can be done individually or in teams of two (non-survey projects only).

All students are expected to participate in class discussions and perform all assignments regardless of the number of credit hours they are registered for.

Grading

Grading for this course will tentatively consist of 25% for presentations, 30% for the course project, 15% for the reviews (3), 10% for the final assignment, and 20% for class participation. The overall performance of 70% or higher is required for getting the S grade.

Assignment Policies

Any assignment (a paper review, project report, etc.) must be typed (diagrams can be hand-drawn).
Final assignments must be done individually.
Any external source that aided assignment preparation must be clearly referenced.
Each review must be turned in within one week of the paper's presentation in class.

Academic Integrity

Computer science, as a profession, requires us to seek truth not only in scientific discoveries, but also in dealing with the public, as the public depends on our expertise and honesty to construct their computing infrastructure. Thus, competence and trust are essential to being a scholar and a computing professional in particular.

Your instructor will treat you as a professional, and you should plan on conducting yourself in an appropriate way. No behavior that compromises academic honesty (such as use of someone else's work or code, using prohibited materials during tests, or making your work available to others) will be tolerated in this course. If you need assistance with anything, do not hesitate to contact the instructor.

It is expected that your work represents your own understanding of the problem. If work of others is used, it must be properly cited. Use of properly cited material is acceptable, but no referencing is treated as claiming the work as your own.

Academic dishonesty will not be tolerated in this course. It is the CSE policy that each case of academic integrity violation is recorded. The standing policy of the department is that all students involved in an academic integrity violation will receive an F grade for the course, unless the instructor recommends a lesser penalty for the first instance of academic integrity violation for the student in question.

Additional information about the CSE policies can be found here; UB academic integrity policies are available here; and UB graduate school guidelines can be found here.

Detailed Course Schedule

Assignments will not be posted on this web page and instead will be made available through UBlearns.

Date Class content

Week 1: August 28
Lecture: Introduction, secure computation

Week 2: September 4
Labor Day, no class

Week 3: September 11
Lecture: Anonymity applications

Week 4: September 18 Garbled circuit evaluation in the semi-honest and malicious models:

Presentation 1: A Proof of Security of Yao's Protocol for Two-Party Computation (proofs can be skimmed); presenter Myoungin Jeong

Presentation 2: Billion-Gate Secure Computation with Malicious Adversaries (with an emphasis on security in the malicious model); presenter Gideon Arugollu

Week 5: September 25 Garbled circuit evaluation (cont.):

Presentation 1: Improved Garbled Circuit Building Blocks and Applications to Auctions and Computing Minima (efficient circuits for integer operations for use in garbled circuit computation); presenter Amy Pritchard

Presentation 2: Non-Interactive Verifiable Computing: Outsourcing Computation to Untrusted Workers (verifiable computation using garbled circuit evaluation); presenter Chen Yuan

Week 6: October 2 Secret sharing:

Presentation 1: Sharemind: A Framework for Fast Privacy-Preserving Computations (secure multi-party computation based on additive secret sharing); presenter Zihao Shan

Presentation 2: Improved Primitives for Secure Multiparty Integer Computation (integer computation using secret sharing); presenter Ashutosh Jainvi

Week 7: October 9 Secret sharing (cont.):

Presentation 1: Secure Computation on Floating Point Numbers (floating-point computation using secret sharing); presenter Siddharth Pateriya

Presentation 2: PICCO: A General-Purpose Compiler for Private Distributed Computation (a compiler for general-purpose secure computation using threshold secret sharing); presenter Chen Yuan

Week 8: October 16 Homomorphic encryption:

Presentation 1: Efficient and secure comparison for on-line auctions and A correction to 'efficient and secure comparison for on-line auctions (a new homomorphic encryption scheme and comparison protocol); presenter Myoungin Jeong

Presentation 2: Privacy preserving error resilient DNA searching through oblivious automata (privacy-preserving evaluation of finite automata using homomorphic encryption); presenter Ashutosh Jainvi

Week 9: October 23 Secure and verifiable outsourcing:

Presentation 1: How to securely outsource cryptographic computations (privacy-preserving and verifiable outsourcing of modulo exponentiations); presenter Amy Pritchard

Presentation 2: Harnessing the cloud for securely outsourcing large-scale systems of linear equations (privacy-preserving and verifiable outsourcing of linear equation computation); presenter Gideon Arugollu

Week 10: October 30 E-cash:

Presentation 1: Compact E-cash (electronic cash with compact wallets); presenter Zihao Shan

Presentation 2: Zerocoin: Anonymous distributed e-cash from bitcoin (improvement on Bitcoin in terms of privacy); presenter Siddharth Pateriya

Week 11: November 6 Block chains:

Presentation 1: Hawk: The Blockchain Model of Cryptography and Privacy-Preserving Smart Contracts; presenter Myoungin Jeong

Presentation 2: FruitChains: A Fair Blockchain; presenter Zihao Shan

Week 12: November 13 Anonymous authentication:

Presentation 1: Signature schemes and anonymous credentials from bilinear maps; presenter Ashutosh Jainvi

Presentation 2: Anonymous credentials light; presenter Siddharth Pateriya

Week 13: November 20 Voting:

Presentation 1: Practical multi-candidate election system; presenter Gideon Arugollu

Presentation 2: The vector-ballot e-voting approach; presenter Amy Pritchard

Week 14: November 27 Voting:

Presentation 1: Scratch & Vote: Self-Contained Paper-Based Cryptographic Voting; presenter Chen Yuan

Week 15: December 4 Project presentations

Date	Class content
Week 1: August 28	Lecture: Introduction, secure computation
Week 2: September 4	Labor Day, no class
Week 3: September 11	Lecture: Anonymity applications
Week 4: September 18	Garbled circuit evaluation in the semi-honest and malicious models: Presentation 1: A Proof of Security of Yao's Protocol for Two-Party Computation (proofs can be skimmed); presenter Myoungin Jeong Presentation 2: Billion-Gate Secure Computation with Malicious Adversaries (with an emphasis on security in the malicious model); presenter Gideon Arugollu
Week 5: September 25	Garbled circuit evaluation (cont.): Presentation 1: Improved Garbled Circuit Building Blocks and Applications to Auctions and Computing Minima (efficient circuits for integer operations for use in garbled circuit computation); presenter Amy Pritchard Presentation 2: Non-Interactive Verifiable Computing: Outsourcing Computation to Untrusted Workers (verifiable computation using garbled circuit evaluation); presenter Chen Yuan
Week 6: October 2	Secret sharing: Presentation 1: Sharemind: A Framework for Fast Privacy-Preserving Computations (secure multi-party computation based on additive secret sharing); presenter Zihao Shan Presentation 2: Improved Primitives for Secure Multiparty Integer Computation (integer computation using secret sharing); presenter Ashutosh Jainvi
Week 7: October 9	Secret sharing (cont.): Presentation 1: Secure Computation on Floating Point Numbers (floating-point computation using secret sharing); presenter Siddharth Pateriya Presentation 2: PICCO: A General-Purpose Compiler for Private Distributed Computation (a compiler for general-purpose secure computation using threshold secret sharing); presenter Chen Yuan
Week 8: October 16	Homomorphic encryption: Presentation 1: Efficient and secure comparison for on-line auctions and A correction to 'efficient and secure comparison for on-line auctions (a new homomorphic encryption scheme and comparison protocol); presenter Myoungin Jeong Presentation 2: Privacy preserving error resilient DNA searching through oblivious automata (privacy-preserving evaluation of finite automata using homomorphic encryption); presenter Ashutosh Jainvi
Week 9: October 23	Secure and verifiable outsourcing: Presentation 1: How to securely outsource cryptographic computations (privacy-preserving and verifiable outsourcing of modulo exponentiations); presenter Amy Pritchard Presentation 2: Harnessing the cloud for securely outsourcing large-scale systems of linear equations (privacy-preserving and verifiable outsourcing of linear equation computation); presenter Gideon Arugollu
Week 10: October 30	E-cash: Presentation 1: Compact E-cash (electronic cash with compact wallets); presenter Zihao Shan Presentation 2: Zerocoin: Anonymous distributed e-cash from bitcoin (improvement on Bitcoin in terms of privacy); presenter Siddharth Pateriya
Week 11: November 6	Block chains: Presentation 1: Hawk: The Blockchain Model of Cryptography and Privacy-Preserving Smart Contracts; presenter Myoungin Jeong Presentation 2: FruitChains: A Fair Blockchain; presenter Zihao Shan
Week 12: November 13	Anonymous authentication: Presentation 1: Signature schemes and anonymous credentials from bilinear maps; presenter Ashutosh Jainvi Presentation 2: Anonymous credentials light; presenter Siddharth Pateriya
Week 13: November 20	Voting: Presentation 1: Practical multi-candidate election system; presenter Gideon Arugollu Presentation 2: The vector-ballot e-voting approach; presenter Amy Pritchard
Week 14: November 27	Voting: Presentation 1: Scratch & Vote: Self-Contained Paper-Based Cryptographic Voting; presenter Chen Yuan
Week 15: December 4	Project presentations