The Fields Institute
Industrial Mathematics Seminar Series

Thursday, May 13, 1999
5:00 - 7:30 p.m.
Room 230, The Fields Institute

SCHEDULE

Cryptography

5:00 - 6:00 p.m.

"Distributed Trust Mechanisms in Information Security and Cryptography"
Doug R. Stinson, Director, Centre for Applied Cryptographic Research (CACR), University of Waterloo

6:30 - 7:30 p.m.
"The Mathematics of Public-Key Cryptography"
Gary Walsh, Research Mathematician, Communications Security Establishment, Ottawa

ABSTRACTS

"Distributed Trust Mechanisms in Information Security and Cryptography"
Doug R. Stinson, Director, Centre for Applied Cryptographic Research (CACR), University of Waterloo

In many practical situations it is undesirable to entrust one individual person with sensitive or secret information, or with the ability to carry out a sensitive action. This motivates the consideration of shared control schemes, which can be realized using methods of secret sharing. In a secret sharing scheme, knowledge of a predetermined secret is shared among several people in such a way that a specified quorum is required in order for the secret value to be computed. In this talk, we discuss some of the mathematical techniques used to construct secret sharing schemes, and present several examples of how secret sharing schemes can be used to facilitate various types of distributed trust mechanisms.

"The Mathematics of Public-Key Cryptography"
P. Gary Walsh, Research Mathematician, Communications Security Establishment, Ottawa

In recent years there has been an enormous growth in the number of implementations of Public-Key Cryptography worldwide. The applications of this technology are extensive, as it provides an assortment of privacy and authentication services which were essentially not available previously. In this talk we discuss the security provided by these systems, in particular the underlying Mathematics which is needed to measure the level of security provided. This talk is intended for a general audience.

SPEAKERS

Doug R. Stinson is currently a Professor in Department of Combinatorics and Optimization, University of Waterloo and holder of the NSERC/Certicom Industrial Research Chair in Cryptography. From 1990 to 1998, Dr. Stinson held academic positions at the University of Nebraska, and between 1981 to 1990 at the University of Manitoba. Dr. Stinson obtained his Ph.D. degree in 1981 from the University of Waterloo.

P. Gary Walsh is currently a Research Mathematician at Communications Security Establishment, an Adjunct Professor at the University of Ottawa. His main interests are in Diophantine Analysis, Computational aspects of algebraic curves and connections of Number Theory to Cryptography. Dr. Walsh obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Waterloo in 1994 and held an NSERC Postdoctoral Fellowship, 1994 to1996.

OTHER INFORMATION

The Industrial Mathematics Seminar is offered to any interested participant -- no reservation is necessary.