CPSC/PMAT 418 Introduction to Cryptography, Fall 2013

News

Dec. 6 - The deadline for Assignment 4 has been extended to Sunday, Dec. 8, 11:55 PM.
Dec. 6 - Pre-exam office hours are Monday, Dec. 9, 2-4 pm and Tuesday, Dec. 10, 2-4 PM.
Nov. 25 - Model solutions for Assignment 3 are posted on Blackboard, in the Assignments area.
Nov. 19 - Assignment 4 is posted on the assignments page. The due date is Friday, December 6 at 11:55 PM.
Nov. 13 - The deadline for Assignment 3 has been extended to Monday, Nov. 18, 11:55 PM.
Nov. 8 - The final exam will take place on Wed, Dec 11 from 15:30 - 17:30 in ENA 101.
Nov. 8 - Midterm grades are posted on Blackboard. A solution key for the midterm exam is posted on Blackboard under the "Course Documents" link.
Oct. 30 - The midterm exam will take place on Wed, Nov 6 from 15:00 - 15:50 (regularly scheduled class time) in ENA 103. Please note the room change!
Oct. 30 - Model solutions for Assignment 2 are posted on Blackboard, in the Assignments area.
Oct. 28 - Assignment 3 is posted on the assignments page. The due date is Friday, November 15 at 11:55 PM.
Oct. 24 - The deadline for Assignment 2 has been extended to Monday, Oct. 28, 11:55 PM.
Oct. 23 - A revised version of CryptoUtilities.java is available on Blackboard as part of the Assignment 1 solutions (fixes an error in key_from_seed in which arraycopy is used incorrectly).
Oct. 21 - Additional assignment submission instructions: when submitting through Blackboard, please indicate in the "User Comments" area which bonus problems you are submitting for grading. In particular, CPSC students should indicate whether they have attempted the PMAT problem and the cryptanalysis problem. PMAT students should indicate whether they have attempted the programming problem and the cryptanalysis problem.
Oct. 16 - Another interesting article about the possibility of an NSA-created backdoor in a current NIST random number generation standard.
Oct. 16 - Bruce Schneier's latest Crypto-Gram newsletter has a lot of interesting articles, including descriptions of how the NSA can defeat TOR/firefox users, some concern about the upcoming SHA-3 hash function standard, and information as to how to protect yourself from surveillance if you're really paranoid.
Oct. 16 - Another more serious article about whether NIST can still be trusted in light of Snowden's recent revelations.
Oct. 16 - For those of you who like South Partk, here's a short article on their recent episode poking fun at the Snowden/NSA scandal.
Oct. 16 - Model solutions for Assignment 1 are posted on Blackboard, in the Assignments area.
Oct. 16 - Please note that Diane's office hours are now Wednesdays from 10-11.
Oct. 11 - There will be no lecture today - instead, Diane will be available to answer questions about assignment 2. Have a good Thanksgiving weekend!
Oct. 8 - The deadline for Assignment 1 has been extended to Tuesday, October 8 at 11:55 PM.
Oct. 8 - Assignment 2 is posted on the assignments page. The due date is Friday, October 25 at 11:55 PM.
Oct. 3 - Unfortunately, I posted the LaTeX source for Assignment 1 that contains the typeset solutions to all the written problems. As a result, I cannot award any marks for these problems. Credit for the assignments will be adjusted as follows:
- CPSC students: Will only assign a grade for the programming question on A1, and A1 will be worth 4% of your final grade. A2, A3, and A4 will be worth 12% each.
- MATH students: A1 will not count towards your final grade. Students who wish to submit Problem 6 for bonus credit may still do so (will be applied to A2). A2, A3, and A4 will all be weighted equally.
I encourage all students to still complete the assignment on their own and to submit everything as scheduled. We will grade all problems submitted and provide feedback (you will need to know how to do problems like these for the midterm and final exam!), but will only record grades as described above. My apologies for this error.
Oct. 3 - For Problem 6 on Assignment 1 (the programming problem), it is not required to use AES in CBC mode - just get it working using regular AES. Students who submit solutions that do use CBC mode will earn up to 5 bonus marks.
Oct. 3 - I will be away next week attending a (cryptography!) conference. Lectures will be covered by a substitute. I will have extra office hours on Friday, Oct 4 from 14:00-14:45 and 16:00-17:00. Questions can also be sent to me via email while I am away.
Oct. 2 - The LaTeX source file for assignment one is posted on the assignments page. If you want to include the question statements in your submission (not required), you can get the LaTeX for these from here.
Sept. 20 - Assignment 1 has been posted on the assignments page. The due date is October 7 11:55 PM.
Sept. 17 - Presentation slides for tomorrow's tutorial have been posted. Go to the "schedule" page and click on the appropriate links in the tutorial column. The remaining tutorial resources will go live as soon as they are finalized. The LaTeX presentation can also be found on the LaTeX resources page, and there is a link to his JCA presentation under the "Java Cryptography Tools" section of the references page.
Sept. 9 - Several links to tutorials and Java references are available on the course java page.
Sept. 6 - Interesting article on reports that the NSA is able to routinely break supposedly-secure public communications.
Sept. 4 - There will be no tutorial on Wednesday September 11. The first tutorial will take place Wednesday September 18.

Last updated:
http://www.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/~jacobs/Courses/cpsc418/F13/index.html