Since the beginning of this year, I have been developing a course on “Topics in Information-Theoretic Cryptography”. Recently, the course was approved for Fall 2025. I’m very excited to share some research with undergraduate/graduate students! Below, I list some relevant information for the proposed course.

Course Number and Title

ECE598DA: Topics in Information-Theoretic Cryptography

Description

In this course, we will study foundational and recent work on the use of information theory to design and analyze cryptographic protocols. We will begin by studying privacy attacks which motivate strong privacy and security definitions. Then, we will explore the basics of differential privacy and study some core works on zero-knowledge proofs. Finally, we will explore various applications, including watermarking of generative models.

Recommended Textbooks

• Introduction to Cryptography with Coding Theory. By Wade Trappe, Lawrence C. Washington.
• Tutorials on the Foundations of Cryptography. Edited by Yehuda Lindell.

Syllabus

Week 1: Introduction: motivations, one-time pad review, review of probability theory

Week 2: Attacks and Composition Theorems for Differential Privacy

Week 3: Standard Mechanisms for Differential Privacy

Week 4: Information-Theoretic Lower Bounds for Differential Privacy

Week 5: Differentially Private Statistical Estimation and Testing

Week 6: Zero-Knowledge Proofs

Week 7: Statistical Zero-Knowledge Proofs: Part I

Week 8: Statistical Zero-Knowledge Proofs: Part II

Week 9: Multi-Party Computation

Week 10: Multi-Party and Computational Differential Privacy

Week 11: Code-Based Cryptography: Part I

Week 12: Code-Based Cryptography: Part II

Week 13: More Applications

• Watermarking of Generative Models
• Proof Systems for Machine Learning
• Bounded-Storage Cryptography
• Quantum Cryptography

Week 14: Project Presentations