HTW Berlin Medieninformatik

HTW Berlin
Fachbereich 4
Internationaler Studiengang
Internationale Medieninformatik (Bachelor)
Aktuelles - Medien: Kryptographie
Winter Term 2010/11

General Information Sheet

This page describes some of the general information that you will need to know about Cryptography (called AKT-MED by the administration). We know that it is called "Aktuelles - Medien: Cryptography". Such is life. This page also includes course policies that we will expect you to abide by during this term.  You should read through this page and make sure that you understand its contents.  You will probably also want to save it for future reference.  This handout -- as well as other course information -- is available on the web via the course web page, http://www.f4.htw-berlin.de/~weberwu/crypto/. It is generally a good idea to keep a bookmark of my home page around, as I put lots of information there.

The goal of this course is to teach you the mathematical and computational basics of cryptography. We will not be getting deeply into security issues, but the goal is to understand how cryptography works, to understand simple cryptographic protocols, and to know about current applications of cryptography.

Contents:

Course Staff
Collaboration Area
Course Materials
Course Components
Laboratories
Expectations and Policies
Where to Find Additional Information



Course Staff
My status

Prof. Dr. Debora Weber-Wulff, Email: weberwu@htw-berlin.de, will be teaching the computing side of Cryptography and leading exercises.

Tel: 5019-2320, Room: WH C 645. My office hours are posted on my home page. I am notoriously bad to reach by phone, but I read my email religiously and can often be found on Skype as weber-wulff.

 

Dr. Hermann Thiel, Lehrbeauftragter, Email: thiel@htw-berlin.de, will be teaching the mathematical side of Cryptography and leading exercises. He does not hold office hours, but can be reached by email.


Contacting People

We have a collaboration room set up for the class on Moodle, a learning management system which you have probably used before. You can reach the other students in your course this way, there is a forum that reaches all members of the class (this is not identical to the people in your semester, as there are people taking this class from other semesters), a forum for questions for us, some additional material, and areas for uploading your exercises. The secret key is BigSecret.

Please make sure you have a picture that looks like you so that Dr. Thiel and I can associate names with your faces.


Course Materials

Text:   There is no textbook for this course, but an enormous amount of literature on the Internet and in books. We will be covering different topics that are found in different texts over the course of the semester.

Books:  

Online Sources:  


Course Components

Course Meetings

The class lecture meets on Thursdays from 13.45-15.15 in WH C 424. Dr. Thiel and I will give the lecture more or less on alternate weeks. We like to start on time. Please make that extra effort (perhaps getting one tram earlier) to be seated and ready to go at the beginning of class time.

The exercise session meets after the lecture from 1530-17.00 in ???. Whoever is giving the lecture will also be taking the exercise session. Having your own laptop in the exercise session will be useful.

Laptop use

Laptop use in lecutres in the past has proven distracting to instructors, fellow students, and birds passing by, so only use your laptop for taking notes or for official activities (i.e., interactive web research during a class). Your screen should be lowered to a three to six degree angle until you are ready to take notes. You can then raise the screen, type, and then lower it again. Reading your E-Mail, Skyping/IMing, twittering, surfing, watching YouTube videos, etc. are strongly discouraged.

Assignments and Grades

During the term, there will be 17 graded exercises. There will be no examination, as you have enough to do with getting your thesis finished.

Your grade in Cryptography will consist of the following partial grades:

Since this is a sixth semester course, there will be no final grade - your grade will be given on the work completed throughout the semester. Since there is no exam, there is also no re-sit.


Laboratories

Laboratory sessions are an essential part of the course. Laboratory assignments are posted on the home page and linked from the schedule. Since you are writing your Bachelor's thesis in parallel with this course, we expect you to do all of the programming in the lab, and to do a write-up report at home. This does assume that you are ready to go and have read the exercise before you come. If you want to, you can do the exercises ahead of time.

You may work in groups of two. Your reports will, as always, focus on the process of creating your solutions. Each of you must hand in a copy of the report to the Moodle area for the course. You must put both names on the report and include a proper header with the name of the course, the exercise, and the date.

The exercises are due on the Wednesday evening of the next week by 23.00. They may, of course, be handed in early.

The lab reports need not be especially beautiful, but they should use complete sentences in English or German and concisely explain the above points. We do not want a click-by-click report, but a focused report on what happened in the lab. Taking digital notes during the lab will dramatically decrease the amount of time you need to spend on this. Don't forget to put your name, your email, the name of the course, the exercise number, and the date on the report. Use a spelling checker. The reports are to be submitted as a pdf to the Moodle area for exercise submission for grading.



Expectations and Policies

Missed Meetings

You are responsible for all material covered in each lecture unless otherwise indicated. This material may not be covered elsewhere, so if you miss a meeting, you are responsible for getting notes from a friend or otherwise making up the material. Handouts will not be distributed on paper outside of class, but all course handouts will be made available on the course web site.

Attendance at laboratory is expected. If for any reason you cannot attend your scheduled laboratory session, it is your responsibility (and not a friend's) to make alternate arrangements with us as far in advance as is reasonably possible. In particular, if you have an athletic event or other scheduled conflict, we expect that you will discuss this with us as soon as the conflict is scheduled. We understand that unforseen events do arise (see below); however, your sister's wedding is (probably) not one of them.

The only exceptions to this policy (i.e., last-minute or after-the-fact rescheduling) will be in cases of significant and unanticipatable emergency. In these cases, we request documentation. In addition, we would appreciate it if you would make an effort to notify me at the earliest possible opportunity.

Late Work

Laboratory assignments will have due dates clearly indicated. Late work will not be accepted and counts as missed.

Collaboration

This section details the general course collaboration policy. Certain assignments require different kinds of, or restrictions on, collaboration. When the collaboration policy differs from that described here, it will be specified in the laboratory assignment.

We encourage you to work together on the exercises. They are designed for working in small groups, allowing you to help each other learn and to balance your knowledge and strengths. Note that collaboration extends to discussion and problem-solving, but not to writeups. We expect that any written work you turn in will be your own, though it may reflect joint preparation.

In each piece of work that you turn in, you must specify everyone with whom you have collaborated and each person's role in the collaboration (e.g., pre-lab, post-lab discussion and analysis, in-lab coding  - specify which pieces or how responsibility was distributed - , debugging, or advice). Failure to specify such collaboration will be interpreted as a statement that you have not collaborated with others in your work. While this is acceptable under course policy, it is probably ill-advised. (Really. We want you to work together and to learn from each other!).

Of course, copying of the work of others (especially from the Internet) and not quoting it properly is entirely unacceptable and may result in a failing grade for the course.

We also encourage you to make use of the collaboration room forum for questions. Do not worry - if you have a question, there are sure to be 5 others with the same question, so ask! Someone is bound to help, either a fellow student or one of us.


Where to Find Additional Information

The primary source of information for this course is our web site. The home page for the course is located at http://www.f4.htw-berlin.de/~weberwu/crypto/. Course materials will be made available there and in the collaboration room. You can set your profile to have news from the collaboration room sent to your normal email address.


Copyright 2010 Dr. Hermann Thiel & Prof. Dr. Debora Weber-Wulff - All rights reserved.
Questions or comments: <weberwu@htw-berlin.de>

This material is jointly prepared by Dr. Hermann Thiel and Prof. Dr. Debora Weber-Wulff. Much of the material comes from other sources and is denoted by the copyright notices on the individual pages

Last Change  2010-10-07 15:07