Speaker: Prof.dr.ir. Henk van Tilborg (CC, Math, TU/e)
Date, Time and Place: September 3, 2009. 16:45 - 17:00. HG 6.96
Title:Protection of digital data: possibilities and restrictions
Abstract:
When voting electronically, banking over internet, but also when remotely controlling power plants, waterworks, or even railroad switches, digital data are being transmitted and stored that are very sensitive to abuse. To properly protect those data, techniques are employed that make use of cryptography (at least, these techniques should be used). Secure applications typically make use of a number of protocols (think of obtaining an electronically verifiable identity or counting an anonymous vote). Such a protocol, in turn, makes use of cryptographic primitives like encryption, authentication, digital signatures, or hash functions.
In this presentation, these primitives will be explained in an intuitive way, but also some protocols will be shown. Of course, the difference between symmetric and asymmetric systems will be made clear, just like the difference between systems that rely on specific mathematical assumptions (like the difficulty of factoring numbers) and those that don't. When choosing a specific system it also matters if confidentiality is needed or if suffices that the integrity of the data can be guaranteed (are the data coming from whom you think, has somebody manipulated them, are they being transmitted for the second time, etc.).