Privacy Enhancing technology

Teacher(s)

Pereira Olivier; Peters Thomas (compensates Pereira Olivier); Standaert François-Xavier;

Language

English
> French-friendly

Prerequisites

Familiarity with the basic notions of cryptography is welcome

Main themes

The exact course topics will change from year to year. Examples of relevant topics include techniques that make it possible to :

• compute on encrypted data;
• build a database that can be queried without the server knowing which parts of it are accessed;
• have anonymous communications;
• make digital cash;
• shuffle cards over the internet;
• organize an election in which the organizers can't cheat;
• have services with access control that keep users untraceable;
• understand attacks against privacy, including de-anoymization/re-identification attacks, profiling, data mining and side-channel attacks;
• identify privacy issues related to mass surveillance and solutions to prevent them.

Learning outcomes

At the end of this learning unit, the student is able to :
1	Based on the LO referential of the program « Master in Electrical Engineering », this course contributes to the development, acquisition, and evaluation of the following learnging outcomes : AA1.2, AA1.3, AA2.2, AA2.3, AA2.5, AA3.1, AA5.1, AA5.3, AA5.4, AA5.6, AA6.1, AA6.2, AA6.3 Specific learning outcomes of the course At the end of this class, the student will be able to  : Analyze the risks of attacks against correctness and privacy for a concrete system Understand cryptographic and architectural tools allowing to mitigate privacy issues Evaluate utility and privacy metrics for databases and distributed systems

Content

Various themes will be discussed each year. These themes may include: secure two-party and multi-party protocols, oblivious memories, verifiable voting, crypto-currencies, verifiable computation, anonymous credentials, differential privacy and big data, post-Snowden cryptography.

Teaching methods

Lectures and exercise sessions.
Homeworks and mini-projects may be proposed during the semester.

Evaluation methods

The final examination is based on exercises, based on the learning outcomes listed above. One of more mini-projects may be proposed during the semester and may contribute for at most 20% to the final grade. In any case, the grade of the mini-projects would only contribute to the final grade if it is beneficial to the grade.
The exam of the January session is open-book, while the exam of the August session is closed-book.
Details are available on Moodle.

Online resources

https://moodle.uclouvain.be/course/view.php?id=3249

Teaching materials

• Slides and online references are available from Moodle.

Faculty or entity

ELEC