SCUOLA DI DOTTORATO IN MATEMATICA E INFORMATICA

Prof. Emilio Tuosto, University of Leicester (UK), will give a course entitled:

Introduction to Security Protocols

The official presentation of the course will be on April 13 (Wed)
in Aula C, at 16:30. The schedule of the course will be fixed 
during this meeting.     

Objectives:

The main aim of this course is to present basic concepts on the formal
modelling (and, to a minor extent, analysis) of cryptographic
protocols. Students will learn how to design, interpret, and reason
about security protocols. If time allows, a bries overview of formal
techniques for the study of such protocols will be also given.

Contents:

- Abstract representation of security protocols
- The Dolev-Yao intruder
- The strange Lowe attack
- Kerberos (optional)
- Process algebras for security protocols (optional)

Short description:

The use of computers and computer networks is an integral part of our
lives. This has given us numerous advantages and convenience as well
as it yields critical issue. How can computer systems defend
themselves against network attacks? How can we ensure that our data
have not been tampered with, or disclosed without our consent? How can
we be sure of the identity of the party whom we are communicating
with? These are some of the security issues that must be addressed
properly. A fundamental part of security systems is digital
cryptography. Albeit paramount, we abstract away from actual
cryptosystems and use a few notation and techniques for the analysis
of cryptographic protocols commonly adopted in distributed
applications are introduced.


Reading material:
- W. Stallings. Cryptography and Network Security; ISBN: 0131873164,
  Prentice Hall. 2006.
- D. Dolev and A. C. Yao. On the Security of Public Key
  Protocols. Report. No. STAN-CS-8 l-854
- Lowe, Gavin. An attack on the Needham-Schroeder public key
   authentication protocol. Information Processing Letters 56 (3), 1995
- Roger M. Needham and Michael D. Schroeder. Using Encryption for
  Authentication in Large Networks of Computers. CACM, 21(12), 1978
- Lecture notes