CS 294-163: Secure Systems from Decentralized Trust
UC Berkeley – Fall 2022
Description
This course is a graduate seminar on developing (secure) systems from decentralized trust.
In the past years, there has been much excitement in both academia and industry around the notion of decentralized security, which refers to, loosely speaking, security mechanisms that do not rely on the trustworthiness of any central entity. In only a few years, this area has generated many beautiful cryptographic constructs as well as a tremendous amount of real-world adoption, through blockchain, secure custody of secrets, secure collaborative learning – and now forming the technical backbone of the movement on “web3.0”.
The course will cover topics such as decentralized ledger systems, decentralized authentication and access control, end-to-end encryption systems, secure collaborative learning through secure multi-party computation, and others. For concrete learning, throughout the class we will develop a decentralized trust stack enabling common decentralized trust applications (3 units).
Meeting place and time
Location: Wed: HP Auditorium (Soda), Fri: Wozniak Lounge (Soda)
Time: Wednesday and Friday 1-2:30pm
Attendance is strongly encouraged.
Commmunication
We will primarily use EdStem for sending out course announcements and answering questions. Please make sure to sign up.
Prerequisites
This is an advanced course, requiring a solid introduction to cryptography (CS161 or equivalent) and to systems (CS162 or equivalent).Breadth Requirement
Graduate students can use this class to satisfy a relevant prelim breadth requirement.Course Staff
- Prof. Raluca Ada Popa
- Emma Dauterman
- Mayank Rathee (TA)
- Special guests: Alice, Bob and the adversary
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Deian Stefan of UCSD for giving us permission to use the design of his CSE 130 course website.