Courses offered by members of the cryptology and data security research group. Current courses are listed below. See also the past courses and the thesis projects.

Overview

Undergraduate level – Bachelor Informatik, University of Bern

Two yearly courses that introduce students to relevant areas in computer science and prepare for the advanced courses. Undergraduate courses are taught in German.

  • Diskrete Mathematik (Fall)

  • Algorithmen, Wahrscheinlichkeit und Information (Spring)

Graduate level – University of Bern and Joint Master in Computer Science

Topics span cryptology, security, distributed computing, privacy, and more.

Thesis projects

Spring 2023

  • Algorithmen, Wahrscheinlichkeit und Information (in German)

    Bachelor Informatik, University of Bern; KSL 451670; please register in ILIAS.

    Diese Vorlesung führt das Gebiet der randomisierten Algorithmen und probabilistischen Verfahren ein, welche heute in der Informatik eine grosse Rolle spielen. Darüber hinaus werden auch die Grundlagen der Informationstheorie und der Begriff der Entropie vorgestellt. Probabilistische Methoden und Analysen treten in vielen Gebieten auf, in der Kommunikation, in Machine Learning, zur Datenanalyse und in der Kryptologie. Nach einer Einführung in die Wahrscheinlichkeitsrechnung mit diskreten Ereignissen werden wichtige probabilistische Methoden und deren Analyse behandelt, so zum Beispiel Abschätzungen mittels Chernoff-Bounds und die probabilistische Methode. Randomisierte Algorithmen auf Graphen und in der Zahlentheorie werden diskutiert. Entropie als Informationsmass wird eingeführt und Methoden für Codierung und Datenkompression behandelt.

    Kurssprache ist Deutsch. Unterlagen sind in Englisch.

  • Cryptographic Protocols

    University of Bern and Joint Master in Computer Science; KSL 468672; please register in ILIAS.

    Description

    How do you authenticate online without disclosing any identity or password? Could a cloud service process encrypted data? How can individuals safeguard their privacy against ubiquitous online services? How do cryptographic voting protocols solve the conflicting goals of authorizing all voters while maintaining their privacy? Will Big Brother always be able to watch every one of your actions on the Internet, or can you hide your data from future cloud systems? Can one distribute a cryptographic operation among a group of participants such that any minority of them may try to cheat but will not succeed? How can two millionaires compute who is richer without disclosing their wealth to each other?

    This course gives an introduction to the amazing world of cryptographic protocols with multilateral security. They realize such diverse goals as zero-knowledge proofs, secure multi-party computation, private online elections, auctions without trusted parties, distributed threshold cryptosystems and more. These methods have been developed over the last decades and start to find applications on the Internet today, ranging from nation-wide electronic voting and secure cloud platforms to cryptocurrencies and blockchains.

    Requirements

    Students are expected to have background knowledge in cryptography, covering notions such as public-key encryption and digital signatures. Ideally they have taken the course “Cryptography,” which is offered in the Fall Semester immediately before, but this is not strictly required.

  • Seminar: Cryptography and Data Security

    University of Bern and Joint Master in Computer Science; KSL 453835; please register in ILIAS.

    The seminar in cryptology and data security covers various relevant topics in the area and its contents will change from one semester to another. Typical subjects are cryptographic protocols, secure computation, privacy, distributed trust and blockchains. A seminar will start with an overview of the topic, where some basic principles are introduced. The main content will typically consist of interactive presentations by the participants, on the basis of the existing literature, ranging from classic research papers to recently developed systems. In addition, students as well as members of the cryptology and data security research group will present their own current work.

    Due to unforeseen circumstances, this seminar has reduced scope in FS 2023 and will only admit BSc students of UniBE working on their theses.

    MSc students wishing to participate in a technical seminar are requested to join the interdisciplinary Seminar Law and Computer Science, information see below. There will be opportunities for technical (programming!) work.

  • Seminar Law and Computer Science: Distributed Trust in Finance

    University of Bern, Master of Law and Joint Master in Computer Science; KSL 475009; ILIAS link.

    Prof. Dr. Mirjam Eggen, Zivilistisches Seminar
    Prof. Dr. Christian Cachin, Institut für Informatik
    Dr. Christian Sillaber, Zivilistisches Seminar

    This interdisciplinary seminar is offered jointly by the Institute for Civil Law and the Institute of Computer Science. Students of computer science and law will work closely together on questions concerning (de-)centralized finance and its potential in the legal domain. The goal of the seminar is to explore how technologies such as blockchain and de-centralized finance can be leveraged to realize new business models within our legal framework.

    Participants will work in interdisciplinary groups to realize a mock business case and solve technical and legal problems. After either selecting a provided business model (or bringing one of their own), students will design, discuss and build a prototype capable of demonstrating technical viability of the business case. In addition to the engineering challenge, the teams will demonstrate compliance of their business model (and prototype) with applicable laws and regulations where law students take the role of a general counsel and support the project’s ambitious goals.

    • Schedule
      • Information Session: 30.11.2022, 17:30
      • Start of the registration period: 30.11.2022, 18:00h
      • Seminar days (see info for details): 24.02.2023, 31.03.2023, 12.05.2023
    • See the information sheet for details.

    There are still free slots. If you are interested to participate, please contact Christian Cachin by email until 20 February 2023.

Fall 2022

  • Diskrete Mathematik (in German)

    Bachelor Informatik, University of Bern; KSL 11479; please register in ILIAS.

    Diese Vorlesung führt in diskrete Mathematik ein und behandelt eine Reihe von zentralen Methoden und Konzepten, welche wichtig sind für das tiefere Verständnis der Informatik. Diskrete Mathematik ist ein Teilgebiet der Mathematik, das sich hauptsächlich mit endlichen und abzählbaren Strukturen beschäftigt. Zuerst werden Grundlagen der Logik eingeführt, insbesondere Aussagenlogik und Prädikatenlogik. Wichtige Themen sind danach Mengen, Relationen und Funktionen. Es folgen Themen aus Algebra und Zahlentheorie, welche auch für kryptographische Verfahren oder Codierungstheorie die Basis bilden. Darüber hinaus werden Konzepte aus der Graphentheorie vorgestellt. Die Vorlesung dient der Vorbereitung auf weitergehende Themen der theoretischen Informatik, wie Berechenbarkeit, Komplexität, Effizienz und probabilistische Algorithmen.

    Kurssprache ist Deutsch. Unterlagen sind in Englisch.

  • Cryptography

    University of Bern and Joint Master in Computer Science; KSL 453847; please register in ILIAS.

    Cryptography addresses the protection of data in the digital world; it has become a crucial technology for the information society, with influence to public policy and questions of privacy. This course presents an introduction to modern cryptography. Based on mathematical models for reasoning about the security of information systems, the course explains the fundamental concepts of cryptography and discusses the most important cryptographic algorithms that are in everyday use on the Internet. It covers security proofs, computational security, pseudorandomness, block ciphers, hash functions, and message authentication. Public-key cryptosystems and public-key signature schemes that rely on number-theoretic primitives are also introduced and some elementary cryptographic protocols will be presented.

  • Seminar: Cryptography and Data Security

    University of Bern and Joint Master in Computer Science; KSL 453835; please register in ILIAS.

    Prof. Dr. Christian Cachin, Institut für Informatik
    Dr. Patrick Liniger, Institut für Informatik

    The seminar in cryptography and data security covers various relevant topics in the area and its contents will change from one semester to another. Typical subjects are cryptographic protocols, secure computation, privacy, distributed trust and blockchains. A seminar will start with an overview of the topic, where some basic principles are introduced. The main content will typically consist of interactive presentations by the participants, on the basis of the existing literature, ranging from classic research papers to recently developed systems. In addition, students as well as members of the cryptology and data security research group will present their own current work.

    Theme of the seminar in Fall 2022 (Details are available in ILIAS)

    E-Voting, from cryptographic protocols to usable systems

    Cryptographic protocols for secure voting, in particular so-called end-to-end verifiable election schemes, have been the subject of extensive research efforts during the last four decades. Electronic voting poses many challenges: the precise characterization of subtle security properties including verifiability and coercion resistance, the design and implementation of cryptographic protocols satisfying them, the verification of implemented systems against their specifications, and, last but not least, the usability of practical systems.

    The seminar explores some of the cryptographic primitives used in modern e-voting protocols and several practical systems.

Earlier semesters

  • Past courses

    Information about courses in earlier semesters can be found in the archive.