11 September 1999
Date: Fri, 10 Sep 1999 18:46:51 +0100 (GMT) From: Peter Lister <P.Lister@sychron.com> To: ukcrypto@maillist.ox.ac.uk, BletchleyPark@cranfield.ac.uk Subject: FYI - Crypto course in Oxford by Andrew Hodges Andrew Hodges, Oxford mathematician and biographer of Alan Turing will be giving a series of 10 lectures entitled "Crypto", Wednesday evenings 7:30 - 9:30 starting 19th Jan 2000, at 92 Woodstock Road, Oxford under the auspices of OUDCE. GBP47.00 for the series. Originally, this was scheduled for October on Wednesday starting 6th Oct 1999, but it was knocked back a term after the dead tree prospectus went to press, as I found out when OUDCE bounced my booking. Andrew Hodges has brief information at: http://www.turing.org.uk/synth/conted.html The prospectus blurb... "The world of codes and ciphers is now big business, and questions about encryption impinge on every Internet user. This course explores the principles underlying codes and codebreaking." There's an info sheet, more up to date than the prospectus, the front of which doesn't say much of interest to members of ukcrypto or bpark, who know what crypto is and who Turing was; the back describes the weekly topics, which I reproduce here verbatim... 1 Introduction to the question of enciphered communications and its present day significance. 2 Probability and the information gain associated with conditional probability. Concept of "randomness". 3 What is information? The concept of redundancy - the Shannon theorems and digital data compression. 4 Coding systems such as (1) crossword anagrams (2) monoalphabetic cryptograms and (3) other ancient ciphers. The concept of keys and key systems - mappings and algorithms in mathematics. 5 The Enigma cipher system employed by Nazi Germany and how it was broken. 6 The historical developments in the Second World War - the breaking of the Lorenz ciphers on the Colossus electronic machine - the use of measure of information. 7 How to develop the concept of an algorithm - the practical limits on computation - time and space complexity theory. 8 The explosion of commercial cryptography after 1978 and the concept of a "trapdoor" cipher system. The problems of factorisation and of the discrete logarithm as examples of computations requiring exponential time. 9 Current DES and PGP cipher systems. Questions of privacy and state control - link with technical questions about complexity, computer power and the "P=NP problem". 10 Current practical problem of secure business transactions on the Internet - Present and future encodement systems. Peter Lister P.Lister@sychron.com PGP (RSA): 0xE4D85541 Sychron Ltd http://www.sychron.com PGP (DSS): 0xBC1D7258 1 Cambridge Terrace Voice: +44 1865 200211 Oxford OX1 1UR UK FAX: +44 1865 249666
Mr. Lister asks that no inquiries about the lectures be directed to him.