Privacy Enhancing Technologies (WS 2024/25)

Course Number 705054 | Wintersemester 2024/25

Content

The lecture Privacy Enhancing Technologies overviews modern cryptographic and non-cryptographic methods to increase privacy.
Privacy is the ability of an individual or group to seclude themselves or information about themselves.
This lecture covers basic privacy principles and mechanisms to increase a user's privacy. We will take a closer look at building blocks that provide privacy, including:
  • Leakage of aggregate Data and Database recovery
  • Differential Privacy
  • Multiparty Computation protocols
  • (Fully) Homomorphic Encryption
  • Privacy-Preserving machine learning
  • Oblivious Pseudorandom Functions
  • Regulation on privacy
  • Blockchains
  • TOR, traffic analysis
  • Zero Knowledge Proofs
Keep in touch on Discord (channel #pets).

Material

You can find the individual slides via the links below and the collection here.
Date Lecture 14:00–16:00 (HS i1) Who Practicals 16:00–16:45 (HS i1)
07.10.2024 L1 – Intro, Overview CR
14.10.2024 L2 – Reconstruction Attacks FM T1 handout
21.10.2024 L3 – Differential Privacy FM
28.10.2024 L4 – Secure Multi-Party Computation protocols FS T1 Q&A
04.11.2024 L5 – (Fully) Homomorphic Encryption protocols FS T1 Q&A
11.11.2024 L6 – Practical aspects of HE/MPC FS T2 handout
18.11.2024 L7 – Privacy-Preserving Machine Learning FS Talk: SCT auditing in practice by LH
25.11.2024 GL1 - Legal Implications of Privacy-Enhancing Technologies by David Bierbauer T2 Q&A
02.12.2024 L8 – TOR and traffic analysis LH T2 Q&A
09.12.2024 L9 – Oblivious Pseudorandom Functions LH T3 handout
16.12.2024 L10 – Privacy Regulations LH T3 Q&A
13.01.2025 L11 – Blockchains CR T3 Q&A
20.01.2025 L12 – Zero-Knowledge Proofs (for Blockchain and more) CR
27.01.2025 GL2 - Zero-Knowledge Proofs: Plonkish Proofs & Use Cases Week of Assignment Interviews

Practicals

Task Kick-off (16:00) Deadline (23:59, git tag) Material
T1 14.10.2024 08.11.2024
T2 11.11.2024 06.12.2024
T3 09.12.2024 17.01.2025
Group registration deadline: 14.10.2024 (23:59)

Administrative Information

Lecture Exams (VO)

The VO exam is a written exam. Please find the exam dates and registration in TUGRAZonline.

Practicals (KU)

In the practicals, you implement small projects related to the topics discussed in the lectures. The practicals consist of 3 assignments T1, T2, T3 solved in teams of 2 students. You can earn a total of 100 points; the grading scheme is shown in the table below. You will get a grade when you hand in a solution to T1 by adding a git tag. Groups that do not hand in anything for T1 will not be given a grade and will be unregistered from the course. Handing in T1 (even an empty solution) is the only condition for “getting a grade.”
Grade 5 4 3 2 1
Min. Points < 50 ≥ 50 ≥62.5 ≥ 75 ≥ 87.5 of 100

Teams and Team Registration

The KU is done in teams of 2 students. You can use the IAIK discord channel #pets to find team members. You then register your team at the TeachCenter.

Submission

You are given access to a git repository in our teaching git, where you have to push your submission. The required content is discussed in the Kick-Off lectures. You must mark your final submission by tagging it in git. The tag label starts with the assignment (T1, T2, T3), followed by a dash and a number. As an example, T1-1 is the label for the first assignment. As tags cannot be deleted, you may always update your final submission by increasing the appended number: T1-2, T1-3, etc. Ultimately, the tag with the highest number before the deadline counts. Our test system will test your submissions automatically. Thus, you must respect and meet the file naming constraints of the individual assignments. Otherwise, the tests will all fail, and you will receive 0 points for the assignment. After the hand-in of the last task, there will be a team interview for all three tasks. There, both team members need to be able to explain their solution to each assignment.

Points of Communication

Please use the following methods for communication:

Lecture Dates

Date Begin End Location Event Type Comment
2024/11/25 14:00 16:00 HS i1 Abhaltung VO fix/
2024/12/02 14:00 16:00 HS i1 Abhaltung VO fix/
2024/12/09 14:00 16:00 HS i1 Abhaltung VO fix/
2024/12/16 14:00 16:00 HS i1 Abhaltung VO fix/
2025/01/13 14:00 16:00 HS i1 Abhaltung VO fix/
2025/01/20 14:00 16:00 HS i1 Abhaltung VO fix/
2025/01/27 14:00 16:00 HS i1 Abhaltung VO fix/
2025/01/27 14:00 16:00 HS i1 Abhaltung VO fix/

Lecturers

Christian Rechberger
Christian
Rechberger

Professor

View more
Lena Heimberger
Lena
Heimberger

PhD Student

View more
Fredrik Meisingseth
Fredrik
Meisingseth


View more
Fabian Schmid
Fabian
Schmid

PhD Student

View more
Shibam Mukherjee
Shibam
Mukherjee

Student Researcher

View more

Teaching Assistants

Sebastian Fellner
Sebastian
Fellner


View more