Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PETs)

This course is listed

in Aachen RWTHonline as Privacy Enhancing Technologies,
in Bonn Basis as MA-INF 1223 Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PETs).
in eCampus as |2026 SoSe| MA-INF 1223 - Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PETs). (For signing-up enroll in Basis to course and coursework.)

With more and more data available a clear separation of sensitive data is necessary and needs to be protected. Some of that data must stay within strict environments, for examples hospitals must store certain highly sensitive medical information about patients but they are not allowed to store it outside its own facilities. Some of that data is stored or collected in a cloud environment in encrypted form, say data from a medical device or a smart home. But it shall still be possible to derive important conclusions from it, for example to send immediate help to a patient suffering a heart attack.

Innovative solutions are needed in this area of tension. The research in cryptography provides some highly sophisticated tools for solving the like problems.

Fully homomorphic encryption (FHE).
*Zero-Knowledge techniques, in particular: Non-interactive zero-knowledge proof (NIZKs).
Secure multi-party computations (MPC). [Including: Yao's garbled circuits. Oblivious transfer. Private set intersection (PSI).]
*Anonymisation, TOR. Pseudonymization. Blinding.
*Weaker privacy notions, like differential privacy.

This course shall be the first of two related courses covering different parts from this list.

Lecture

Michael Nüsken

Time & Place

Notice: This course is given in a flipped classroom format.

Plenum: Wednesday, 12⁰⁰ c.t.-14⁰⁰, b-it 0.107 and digital lecture room.
Discussions of questions and items related to exercises, lectures and everything.
Tutorial: Monday 12⁰⁰ c.t.-14⁰⁰, b-it 0.107 and digital tutorial room.
Guided help for present exercises and topics.
Presentations of just reviewed solutions.
Consultation time (optional): Monday, 14¹⁵ c.t.-16⁰⁰, digital lecture room.
This is for personal questions.

First meeting:

Monday, 13 April 2026, 12⁰⁰-15⁴⁵, Introduction & Speed grouping, b-it 0.107 and digital lecture room.

Notes & Exercises

You will find notes and exercises at sciebo until January 2027. Password “0”.

Lecture recordings, exercise handin and feedback are handled via the eCampus pages of the course.

Exam

Notice: As soon as you open the exam, you agree to stay the full examination time. This is necessary to allow one person at a time visiting the restroom.

Exam hints

Verify whether your exam exercise sheets are complete: It should contain Exercise 1 to Exercise ??. Insert your name and matrikel (student number) on each sheet. Approaches, solutions and all side calculations must be written to the given paper. Please use also the back sides. If you need extra paper ask the supervisor. Do not remove the staple!

Do write with blue or black ink!
Do not use a pencil or any other erasable pen.
The exam must be handled independently. Permitted auxiliary means are: writing materials, a pocket calculator (non-programmable, without division with remainder, without linear algebra software), and a cheat sheet, DIN A4, two-sided, written only with your own handwriting. Any other utilities, even own paper, are not permitted.

An attempt at deception leads to failure for this exam and possibly other measures - even if the attempt is only detected later.

The exam will carry the hints displayed on the right.

Pre-exam meeting: Wednesday, 28 July 2026, in/after the plenum.

Exam1: Tuesday, 28 July 2027, 13⁰⁰-16⁰⁰, b-it-max 0.109.

Exam1 review: individual.

Exam2 (repetitions): Tuesday, 8 September 2026, 13⁰⁰-16⁰⁰, b-it-max 0.109.

Exam2 review: individual.

Literature

Jonathan Katz & Yehuda Lindell (2015/2008). Introduction to Modern Cryptography, CRC Press. Webpage.
Mike Rosulek (2017+). The Joy of Cryptography. Webpage including PDF.
Boaz Barak (2019+). An Intensive Introduction to Cryptography. Webpage.
Mihir Bellare & Shafi Goldwasser (2001). Lecture Notes on Cryptography. PDF.
Dan Boneh & Victor Shoup (2017). A Graduate Course in Applied Cryptography.
Johannes A. Buchmann (2004). Introduction to Cryptography. Birkhäuser Verlag, 2nd edition. ISBN 0-387-21156-X (hardcover), 0-387-20756-2.
Joachim von zur Gathen (2015). CryptoSchool. Springer. ISBN 978-3-662-48425-8.
Nigel Smart (2002), Cryptography: An Introduction. McGraw-Hill. ISBN 0-077-09987-7. This first edition is out of print, but a new edition is available online.
Howard M. Heys (2001). A Tutorial on Linear and Differential Cryptanalysis. Technical Report CORR 2001-17, Centre for Applied Cryptographic Research, Department of Combinatorics and Optimization, University of Waterloo, Mar. 2001. (Also appeared in Cryptologia, vol. XXVI, no. 3, pp. 189-221, 2002.) PDF on author's webpage.
Douglas R. Stinson (2005). Cryptography - Theory and Practice. Discrete Mathematics and its Applications. Chapman & Hall / CRC Press, Boca Raton FL, 3rd edition. ISBN 1584885084, 600pp. Book's page including errata. Parts of this text can be found online with GoogleBooks.

There is a long list of free online books about cryptography.

Further topics:

James S. Kraft & Lawrence C. Washington (2014). An introduction to Number Theory with Cryptography.
Steven Galbraith (2018). Mathematics of Public Key Cryptography. Webpage including PDF.

Prerequisites

Good knowledge of basic cryptography -including public key systems, modern security definitions and security reductions- and
fast understanding of mathematical and computer science topics is required.

Allocation

4+2 SWS.

Master in Media Informatics: Computer and Communication Technology, 8 ECTS credits.
Master in Computer Science at University of Bonn, 9 CP.