In this 1-day workshop we will look at how elliptic curves are being applied in cryptography. This workshop is focused on the math that makes things work, and we'll only briefly touch on issues of implementation and deployment. Over the course of the day, we will:

-- Introduce groups as a building block for crypto-systems

-- Work through some common ciphers that are built on groups, and discuss how the group structure influences security issues

-- Introduce elliptic curves via their algebra and geometry, and discuss some of their properties over different base fields

-- Discuss some new ideas in cryptography that are specific to elliptic curves, such as the Boneh-Franklin scheme and elliptic curve methods for factoring numbers.

The workshop is aimed towards people with a "how does it work?" mentality. We do not assume a strong mathematical background beyond algebra. Paper and pencil problem sessions will be a key component.

Tim Carstens and Kevin Wilson
Kevin is a graduate student in mathematics at Princeton University. He is interested in number theoretic things and, if he ever gets time, machine learning and music.

Tim is a graduate student in mathematics at the University of Utah. He enjoys algebraic things and, when free, likes functional programming and signal processing.