Secure Computation

Traditionally, cryptography is used to protect data in transit from an eavesdropping adversary. With the advent of big data and large-scale computation, cryptography can offer us much more.

The course focuses on Secure Computation that has developed as a central tool in cryptography — This allows multiple distributed parties to jointly compute on their private inputs, with the guarantee that nothing beyond the output is revealed. The current and potential impact of secure computing is widespread across scenarios where data sharing is constrained due to legal, ethical, or privacy reasons.

This course

1. gives a comprehensive treatment of foundations of secure computation.
2. explains protocols for special secure computing tasks such as zero-knowledge proofs, private set intersection and private information retrieval.
3. demonstrates use cases of real-world systems where secure computing protocols have been / could be deployed, including ZCash (a privacy-focused cryptocurrency) and the Apple CSAM Detection System.

The primary aim of the course is to enable students to acquire the basic concepts and skills needed to follow the current research trends in theory and practice of secure computation. This course is closely linked to data protection and privacy in large-scale computation, which aligns with the research interests of CCI researchers working on security and privacy.