Secure Computation

Postgraduate course, IIT Kanpur, Computer Science and Engineering, 2024

About the Course

The early pioneers of the Internet envisioned it would be the great equalizer and lead to the complete democratization of the online world—nearly four decades since the reality has diverged considerably from their grand vision. Rather than the bastion of freedom and free speech, which the early visionaries envisioned, the Internet has become a dangerous place. Data theft leading to identity theft has become commonplace. Despite these challenges, it is undeniable that the Internet has revolutionized our lives by making day-to-day tasks easier and connecting people worldwide — however, the risks associated with the Internet loom large. Secure Computation is a promising technique that allows users to keep their data private without sacrificing the Internet’s benefits. Interestingly, the origins of Secure Computation were during the exact times when the Internet was in its nascent stages. The early researchers of Secure Computation studied it mainly as a theoretical endeavor. However, nearly four decades after its inception, Secure Computation is more than just a problem of theoretical importance; it can solve practical privacy problems many of which arise due to the expansion of the Internet.

Course Organization

Where and When?

KD102. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, 5.00 PM to 6.00 PM.

Course Staff

  • Instructor: Adithya Vadapalli

Teaching Assistants

  • Anindya anindyag@cse.iitk.ac.in

Office Hours

By Appointment.

Course Schedule

#DateTopicCompulsory ReadingOptional Reading
131.07.24IntroductionTBDTBD
202.08.24Evaluating an MPC protocol  
312.08.24Intro to GC  
414.08.24P&P, Free XOR, 3GRR  
516.08.24Flexor, 2GRR  
619.08.24Two Halves make a Whole  
721.08.24GC Recap + Quiz 1  
823.08.24GMW Protocol  
928.08.24ROT, OTExtension  
1030.08.24IKNP  
1102.09.24IKNP Malicious  
1204.09.24Blum’s Coin Toss  
1306.09.24Recap of OT + Quiz 2  
1407.09.24Secret Sharing  
1509.09.24ABY  
1611.09.24ABY  
1713.09.24ABY  
 22.09.24Midsem  
1823.09.24Distributed Point Functions  
1925.09.24Grotto Framework  
2027.09.24Grotto Framework  
2130.09.24Prefix Parities  
2204.10.24Share Conversion Recap + Quiz 3  

References

Additional Resources

The are of Privacy and Security really benefits from some outstanding lectures available online. Some of them are below.

  1. Kevin Yeo’s talk at CrySP on Private Information Retrieval
  2. Ryan Henry’s tutorial on PIR at ACM CCS 2017

Course Resources

There is no one textbook for this course. There are few useful books though.

  • Modern Cryptography by Katz and Lindell
  • Pragmatic MPC by Evans, Koselnikov, and Rosulek

Grading

  
Quizzes5%
Midsem25%
Project.70%

Quizzes

There will be around five quizzes. These will be objective one word answer type questions or true/false questions.

Midsems

The midsem would be closed book. However, you will be given the superset of the midsem in advance.

Project

Theoretical Projects

The possible theoretical projects can be (but not limited to) on the following topics:

  • Garbled Circuits
  • Oblivious Transfers
  • Verifiable Secret Sharing
  • Oblivious Random Access Memory
  • Distributed Oblivious Random Access Memory
  • Private Set Intersection

Practical Projects

The possible practical projects can be (but not limited to) on the following topics:

  • Secure Elections
  • Secure Auctions
  • Private Recommender Systems
  • Oblivious Data structures
  • Sender Anonymous Messaging Systems

Academic Integrity

See CSE Department’s Policy here

Mental Health Support

See Counselling Service of CSE Deparment here