(Fall 2025) CS 485/585 - Intro to Cryptography

Project

Instructions

2-3 people group projects. You may choose one of the options below.

  • Research project. Take any route to gain some research experience.
    • Literature review. Pick a topic of interest, and summarize its state of art. The final outcome would be a survey paper including open problems.
    • Original research. Challenge yourself with some open question in the field. You will study a dedicated problem and give a thorough exposition on your (partial) progress on it.

  • Programming project. Implementing cryptographic systems and applications is a risky business. Take this opportunity to learn good practices of putting cryptography into real-world use cases.

  • Societal-impact project. What is the broader implications of cryptography? Are there ethical issues concerning the technology and the workforce development?

Milestones

  • Literature review and proposal: 1-2 pages consisting of 1) the topic of your cohice, background, context, and motivation; 2) core references; and 3) your goal and a plan. (5%)
  • Oral presentation: You need to demonstrate both breath and depth. Aim for a clear introduction that would engage the audience, and then explain a few technical ideas in some detail. Every group member needs to participate. (15%)
  • Final report: ~ 10 pages (excluding references). This should resemble a research paper containing: 1) a short abstract; 2) an introduction that motivates the topic and offers an overview of the entire report; 3) details including proper preliminary materials (e.g., notations & definitions), explaining the main results; and finally 4) further discussion, prospects and open questions when applicable. (10%)
  • Report format: Submit your reports in PDF. I recommend that you typeset in LaTeX, and manage your bibliography using BibTeX.

Timeline (Tentative)

  • Week 1 - 5: team building and discussing project ideas.
  • Week 6: proposal due on 11/03.
  • Week 8: progress check-up.
  • Week 10: in-class presentations.
  • 12/10: final report due.

Suggested topics

Discuss with me if you intend to choose a topic out of this list. Keywords appearing in the front (kwA,kwB) describe the general category of the work.

  • (foundation) Dinur25 How to combine outputs of random permutations? This work gives a Fourier analytical approach.
  • (foundation) MP23 A (relatively) simple construction of a PRG from a one-way function.
  • (foundation,quantum) MH25,LQS+25 Quantum analogue of pseudorandom functions/permutations. Check out the massive amount of further developments recently.
  • (foundation,quantum) CCC+25 What does quantum cryptography need? This work gives a meta-complexity characterization.
  • (foundation,cryptanalysis) Ran25. Breaking the exponential barrier of a famous public-key encryption scheme McEliece. Best paper at Eurocrypt’25
  • (foundation,cryptanalysis) HSMP25. Side channel attack on LWE-based cryptosystems.
  • (real-world,foundation) A lightweight authenticated encryption scheme Ascon standardized by NIST.
  • (real-world) OpenFHE Open-source project that provides efficient extensible implementations of the leading post-quantum Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) schemes.
  • (real-world,cryptanalysis) BA25 Breaking the IEEE Encryption Standard – XCB-AES.
  • (foundation,AI) KGW+23 Watermarking Large Language Models? See also a Talk by Scott Aaronson at Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing.
  • (real-world,AI) ZPD+25 Evaluating Cybersecurity Capabilities and Risks of Language Models.
  • (real-world,ethics) DB23 Using zero-knowledge proof systems to fight disinformation. (Slides at RWC’2023). A scalable development in DCB25.
  • (real-world,ethics) EGKQ24 Public Policy Analytics Over Encrypted Data. A case study on Encrypted Gun Registry KMPQ21.
  • (real-world,ethics) Anonymity: anonymous permutation routing BKO23 and anonymous whistlblowing ACM22. See QTW23 for a theoretical treatment.
  • (real-world,cryptanalysis) HSCCS20 A case study of Google’s Tink library.
  • (real-world,cryptanalysis) Vulnerability due to weak randomness. A case at Cisco in 2019 and an update in 2023. Also see HDWH12 an insightful study on weak keys in TLS.
  • (real-world,cryptanalysis) sgx.fail Vulnerability in Intel’s Software Guard Extension (SGX).
  • (real-world,cryptanalysis) JK25 Analyzing Group Chat Encryption in MLS, Session, Signal, and Matrix.

Caution: Be critical on the references you find. Below are some reputable venues on cryptography and security research Crypto, Eurocrypt, Asiacrypt, TCC, list of security venues (maintained by Dr. Guofei Gu), QCrypt, and general TCS conferences (e.g., STOC, FOCS.