| COMP 133 - Final Paper |
A one page proposal outlining the expected content of your paper and consisting of a title and abstract is due in class on Tuesday November 8. One purpose of the proposal is to start you thinking on what you plan on doing and to begin the process of finding reference material. The proposal is preliminary in nature and if while working on your paper you choose to deviate from it, that's fine but please let me know. A second reason for the proposal is to make sure that everyone hasn't chosen the same topic. In case of too much overlap, you may be asked to change your topic, so it may be worthwhile to have a back up in mind. The final write up of your paper is due at noon on Wednesday December 14. Presentations will take place after the Thanksgiving recess in class and in an agreed upon out of class time. A signup sheet for presentations will be distributed later in the term.
The papers are expected to be 10 to 15 pages but may take other forms depending on their content (e.g., a website). The idea of the paper and presentation is to allow you to explore in depth some topic related to cryptography (even remotely) that is of interest to you. I'm open to anything but if you are looking for ideas here is a short list of possibilities.
History: The books of Singh and Kahn mention many historical incidents that where cryptography apparently paid a crucial role. Choose one of them and investigate it further, e.g., the Zimmermann telegram incident and World War I, the Japanese Purple code and Midway Island, etc. The histories I know of are very Eurocentric. It might be interesting to look into the development of cryptography in other cultures.
Unbroken Ciphers: Simon Singh discusses the Beale Cipher that is as yet unbroken. This is just one of many examples of unbroken ciphers or codes some of which have remained a mystery for centuries. You might investigate the history of one of these ciphers or make an attempt to break it yourself. A list of such ciphers can be found at http://www.elonka.com/UnsolvedCodes.html.
Literature and the Arts: There are a number of examples of alleged and true ciphers in works of art. Some examples: some believe that Shakespeare's works were actually written by someone else (Francis Bacon is a common suspect) and the true author left ciphers in the plays to show the way to his identity; composers have been known to develop themes based on coded references to friends - Elgar's Enigma variations being one of the most famous examples; Dutch still lifes of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are known to have coded different sentiments that the intelligent viewer was to discern. Other examples include the Bible, Emily Dickinson's poetry, and James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake.
Government: Governments (mainly through the military) have always been the biggest generators and consumers of cryptographic material. Current government policy (US as well as other countries) is in a confused state due to the rise of commercial applications of cryptography and the effect this may have "national security." (The main problem is it makes it more difficult for the government to read your mail.) A number of laws, government agency programs, and standards initiatives designed to mitigate the effect of widely available cryptography have developed of late. Examples include NSA's Echelon and Carnivore programs, the NIST Advanced Encryption Standard, and the Patriot Act.
Privacy: There are hundreds of databases around the country that contain information on almost all of us. Who has access to this information is generally not under our control. The long term implications of this are still not understood. Recent examples of identity theft are just one of the problems this raises. Do you want to live in a world where all of your movements are recorded somewhere and analyzed for possible economic advantage?
National Security: Security in the age of terrorism involves tradeoffs as witnessed by the passing of laws such as the Patriot Act soon after 9/11. Are the resulting restrictions to our rights worth the added safety? A related issue concerns the use of cryptography by terrorists. A number of newspaper reports indicate that Al Queda has used encoded email as well as encoded pictures on websites in order to send messages. What evidence is there for this? What about cyber-warfare? What evidence is there for governments being involved in recent cyber-attacks?
Electronic Voting: A number of states have elected to use electronic voting machines in order to avoid problems like the ones that surfaced during the 2000 presidential election in the state of Florida. Critics contend that these machines can be easily compromised and present too tempting a target to hackers. Are these machines safe? What vulnerabilities do they possess?
The Internet: Is it safe to send your credit card to Amazon and if so why? What if anything can be done about large scale viruses that bring down millions of machines at a time? What about the recent denial of service attacks on websites like ebay and yahoo? Can they be stopped? Why do people do these things? What, if anything, can be done about email spam?
Biometrics: The traditional methods of identifying or authenticating an individual have been biometrically based, e.g. fingerprints or signatures. This is likely to be true in the future. Advances in face and voice recognition systems have been amazing. Many researchers have proposed using the pattern of blood vessels in your face or in your eye to identify people as these are much more difficult to fake then signatures or fingerprints. The ultimate of course is the use of DNA for identification. This brings up privacy issues such as who should have access to your DNA.
Mathematics and Computer Science There are many topics that I will not have time to cover in the course that fall into this category. Examples include: the use of elliptic curves in cryptosystems; finding prime numbers for making codes and factoring numbers into primes for breaking codes; so-called zero-knowledge proofs that allow one to prove one know's something without giving away any details.
As is more and more the case, the best place to start looking for information is the Web. On the course homepage I list some websites devoted to cryptography and security that in turn have pointers to hundreds if not thousands of other sites. Here you can find leads to information on such things as government agencies (e.g., NSA - National Security Agency), and recent hacker attacks (e.g., US-CERT - Computer Emergency Response Center). Another great place to start is the journal Cryptologia which can be found in the Science Library. It contains articles on a wide range of topics (historical, technical, literary) including a regular feature on policy issues as well as reviews of recent books with cryptological content. Much of the information of interest is in the news on a regular basis so you might want to search the New York Times website especially on topics related to the Internet, electronic commerce or privacy. The latest technical developments in cryptography are regularly reported in the conferences Crypto, AsiaCrypt and EuroCrypt , the proceedings of which are all available in the Science library as part of the Springer-Verlag Lecture Notes on Computer Science series. If you are having problems deciding what to do or finding information on your topic of choice please come and see me.
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