Design and Analysis of Block Ciphers

Prof. dr. James L. Massey
Adjunct Professor University of Lund, Sweden,
Professor Emeritus ETH Zurich, Switzerland

James L. Massey served on faculties of the University of Notre Dame, Indiana (1962-1977), the University of Califormia, Los Angeles (1977-1980), and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Zurich (1980-1998), where he now holds emeritus status. He is currently an Adjunct Professor at the University of Lund, Sweden. He has served the IEEE Transactions on Information Theory as Editor and as Associate Editor. He is a past President of the IEEE Information Theory Society and of the International association for Cryptologic Research. His awards include the 1988 Shannon Award of the IEEE Information Theory Society , the 1992 Alexander Graham Bell Medal "for contributions to the theory and practical implementation of forward-error-correcting codes, multi-user communications and cryptographic systems; and for excellence in engineering education", and the 1999 Marconi International Fellowship. He is a fellow of the IEEE, a member of the Swiss Academy of Engineering, and an honorary member of the Hungarian Academy of Science.

Contents
In his 1949 paper, "The communication Theory of Secrecy Systems," Claude Shannon proposed the principles of "confusion" and "diffusion" to guide the design of block ciphers. As qualitative as these may sound, these were the design basis for the 1974 Data Encryption Standard (DES), which is still in widespread use, and they remain the guiding principles for the design of block ciphers today. These lectures will explore what is known about block ciphers and, just as importantly, what is not known. Considerable attention will be given to general attacks such as differential cryptanalysis and linear cryptanalysis that have been developed in the last decade and have led to some quantitative measures of security for block ciphers. The most useful ideas that have been introduced into the study of block ciphers will be reviewing and critiqued. The concepts presented in the lectures will be illustrated with examples drawn from modern block ciphers.

Time and place
Eindhoven University of Technology, May 8-12, 2000.

Admission fee
All courses are free for students and members of research groups affiliated with EIDMA. For other participants, an amount of NLG 1,500.- is due. Reductions may apply to students and members of other scientific institutes.

Registration
You can register by sending an e-mail to ms. Henny Houben at eidma@tue.nl before April 24, 2000.