Beyond the Bytes: Prof. Huck Bennett on Cryptography from Antiquity to Present

Please join us for CS Beyond the Bytes, our Undergraduate Speaker Series! Abstract: People have wanted to communicate privately and securely since ancient times, although their schemes for doing so were not always in fact very secure. Fortunately, cryptography---which formalizes the study of secure communication---has developed substantially since then, and this is a good thing. Today, cryptography is at the heart of the internet, electronic commerce, and more. In this talk, we will discuss old, insecure cryptography; private- and public-key cryptography developed in the 20th century (and still in widespread use today!); and modern, 21st-century cryptography that is apparently secure even against quantum computers. The talk will not assume any prior knowledge about cryptography. Speaker Bio: Huck Bennett is an assistant professor in the computer science department at the University of Colorado Boulder. His research area is theoretical computer science, with a focus on lattices and erro...