On 09/11/2010 23:00, [email protected] wrote:
Originally sent to cryptogra...@metzdowd but never got approved, le sigh.
Gonna teach a class on classical crypto to 7-12th graders this weekend.
Need to come up with filler - preferably not lecture style - to pad
out the talk by 50 minutes.
This is going to be a rewarding experience for both teachers and students!
Was trying to come up with some cute demos, or ways to explain some
of the more advanced concepts.
Ex:
Talk about tearing a dollar bill in half for spies to recognize each other
this is very similar to public key crypto; the public key and private key
are a pair, but not identical.
It is not, however, a zero-knowledge proof; by showing your half, an adversary
learns something (what your half looks like). If he took a quick picture, or
it was covertly filmed, he could impersonate either you or the other person
later.
ZKP examples abound:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-knowledge_proof#Abstract_example
Another ZKP example (kinda) involves having a person prove they can
distinguish red from green. Also one can ask whether a video of this
demonstration constitues proof that the prover is not, in fact,
red-green color blind. Two pieces of colored paper are a simple prop
to acquire. :-)
Also, Stinson's visual crypto seems like a great way to teach secret sharing:
http://www.cacr.math.uwaterloo.ca/~dstinson/visual.html
It seems like passing around transparencies with those images would be
a fun thing to break up the lecture format.
Other suggestions are:
http://csunplugged.org/
http://www.wisdom.weizmann.ac.il/~naor/puzzler.html
Any others?
'How to Explain Zero-Knowledge Protocols to Your Children' (or the
Strange Cave of Ali Baba) by Quisquater's and Guillou's families in
collaboration with Tom Berson is certainly a classic
http://sparrow.ece.cmu.edu/group/630-f08/readings/ZK-IntroPaper.pdf
Also a classic the Naor's work with Yael Naor and Omer Reingold:
'Applied Kid Cryptography or How To Convince Your Children You are Not
Cheating'http://www.wisdom.weizmann.ac.il/~naor/PAPERS/waldo.ps
Stinson's visual crypto would be a great way indeed, and perhaps the
Moiré Cryptography by Desmedt (CCS 2000) has the promise to make passing
around transparencies even more fascinating by letting the shares do not
look random.
In 1997, Kobliz published an article in Cryptologia titled 'Cryptography
as a Teaching Tool'. His paper contains examples of 'Kid Krypto' (first
introduced by him with Fellows and Brickell at Crypto '92) that he
recommends for mid and primary grades. His examples goes from Caesar and
Vigenère ciphers, to an information hiding protocol for teachers, to
(going more advanced) Kid-RSA and a perfect code public key system. **A
shortened version is available
athttp://www.math.washington.edu/~koblitz/crlogia.html
<http://www.math.washington.edu/%7Ekoblitz/crlogia.html>
Furthermore, I believe the illustrative example of the Dining
Cryptographers Problem
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dining_cryptographers_problem provided by
Chaum in the very first number of JoC
(http://www.cs.cornell.edu/People/egs/herbivore/dcnets.html) can be
successfully used with 7th-12th graders to introduce advanced concepts
like secure multi-party computation.
Students could gather around the table for dinner experiment. The
teacher would play as the waiter and guide them through the protocol
steps. The material required would be minimal: a coin to flip (or a dice
to roll) and knowledge of exclusive disjunction (or the XOR truth
table). Of course, the dining cryptographer problem can be instrumental
also for talking about attacks at cryptographic protocols. For example,
the last table-companion can be challenged to discover what happens if
she tries to manipulate the final result. Protocol complexity could be
exemplified by increasing the number of fellow guest and noticing how
painfully slow they find out if the NSA is paying their dinner.
Possibly also of interest: Quisquater has renewed his initiative during
the Crypto 2009 rump session announcing the HiDalgocrypt project, 'How
to explain algorithms and cryptography to your (old) children II'
http://rump2009.cr.yp.to/b48d0defdbc661178002c009b0a05114.pdf
Happy teaching,
--
Alfonso De Gregorio, blog http://plaintext.crypto.lo.gy
"The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having
new eyes.", Marcel Proust
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