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Education Encryption Security

Cryptology Research for High School Student? 43

Posted by Cliff from the advanced-studies dept.
John3 asks: "My daughter is enrolled in an Advanced Science Research (ASR) course, at the local high school. The students join the program in 10th grade, choose a research topic, and then locate a mentor to work with them on their topic until high school graduation. My daughter took a cryptology course this past summer, and now she has chosen cryptology for her ASR topic. Most HS students pick mainstream research fields (medicine, genetics), so her science teacher is a bit unsure of where my daughter might locate a cryptology research project appropriate for advanced high school students (especially one that doesn't require security clearance). I'm hoping my fellow Slashdot readers might know of current cryptology/cryptography research projects that offered opportunities for a high school student to participate."
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Cryptology Research for High School Student? More

Cryptology Research for High School Student?

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  • Math teachers! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Jtoxification ( 678057 ) on Sunday January 08, 2006 @01:28AM (#14419992) Homepage Journal
    She needs to visit the math department of her local university.

  • Speaking as an HS student who's done CS research (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Just give her access to all the texts and digital paper libraries she may need. After a while, she'll naturally acrue enough knowledge to start interacting with profs in the field and have interesting ideas.

    The key point is for her to clock in the background knowledge by spending time each day learning more. However, it needs to be self motivated with no outside pressure, else it won't be a fun and trully motivated effort.

  • Cryptography for fun and... more fun. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Shazow ( 263582 ) <{andrey.petrov} {at} {shazow.net}> on Sunday January 08, 2006 @01:45AM (#14420069) Homepage
    Not exactly on topic of finding a mentor, but this request reminded me of my early Computer Science studies when my friends and I took turns coming up with encrypted strings, posted them on a newsgroup we frequented, and made it into a competition as to who could decrypt it first.

    We started with simple stuff like letter substitution, ROT13, etcetera. And then moved on to masking and all sorts of fun/complicated algorithms. This was very educational, in the sense of learning about cryptography. We learned interesting concepts, and rapidly developed tools/scripts/methods for attempt to decrypt arbitrary strings.

    Much fun.

    - shazow

  • Replicate the MD5 Collision Stuff (Score:5, Interesting)

    by queenb**ch ( 446380 ) on Sunday January 08, 2006 @01:56AM (#14420105) Homepage Journal
    Why not have them replicate some existing work? That's usually a good way for folks to get a feel for what's going on. Since the MD5 collision source code got published recently, why not have them try to replicate that?

    2 cents,

    Queen B
    • For a high school student a great and doable project would be to write software to crack CSS from scratch. The format is well documented on the web and cracking it via brute force is easily doable. A discussion of the weaknesses of CSS and the impact on the DVD industry would be doable as well. Plus this is something that has an impact that is more easily explained than MD5 collisions.

  • This is hard (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Zork the Almighty ( 599344 ) on Sunday January 08, 2006 @02:17AM (#14420173) Journal
    It is extremely hard to suggest anything here unfortunately. Most mathematical research in this area requires a very strong background, and students generally just don't have the experience. The best thing you can do is point her at relatively new areas. Along those lines, I suggest quantum computing. Very few people "get" quantum computing right now, and its relatively easy to get started. From the description of the other course I gather she can program in some sort of language. Get her to simulate quantum computations on a regular computer - use a high level programming language. Then you can start investigating quantum algorithms. Start with simple algorithms like searching and sorting, and build up to quantum algorithms like Shor's algorithm for factoring integers. For the research component, have her try to devise a quantum algorithm for some sort of problem. Relatively few people have looked at this, so the field is wide open.

    • Re:This is hard (Score:3, Interesting)

      by emynems ( 944138 )
      I would also strongly recommend her pursuing the quantum computing idea. When I was in high school (just a few years ago) I wrote a quantum computing algorithm that analyzed the effects quantum computing will have on hash functions. I also made modifications to a quantum simulator (written in C, run on a linux laptop) for a more "experimental" and tangible final project. I recommend starting out with a book: "A Shortcut Through Time: The Path to the Quantum Computer" ( http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000A [amazon.com]
      • Quantum computing? I was a software/pure-maths undergrad and was investigating a thesis in formal models of quantum computing. It involves lots of algebra (REAL algebra), tensors, modules and funtional analysis. I can't imagine a high school student even being able to read one sentence of anything written about how quantum computing works.

    • It is extremely hard to suggest anything here unfortunately. Most mathematical research in this area requires a very strong background, and students generally just don't have the experience. The best thing you can do is point her at relatively new areas. Along those lines, I suggest quantum computing. Very few people "get" quantum computing right now, and its relatively easy to get started. From the description of the other course I gather she can program in some sort of language.

      Just because it's a new fi

  • Be wary of lock-in mechanisms like in some EU states where H.S performance dictates -generally- one's educational path. But with this aside, America should pursue challenging coursework for H.S age students. Linking market demand with student interest. It is underapprecatied how Indian math education [c.s probably also] is ahead of the U.S in highschools. Too bad there's no standardized certification program for such advanced h.s coursework mediated through the web by a federal authority...

  • Mentor (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 08, 2006 @03:11AM (#14420381)
    There are plenty of jobs our there that deal with encryption that don't require a security clearence, or much math. Heck, Adobe was using ROT13 for parts of their drm in 2002...

    The point is, lots of companies now use encryption in their products, and there is lots of interesting research to be examined about how products are using encryption (lots of products do it pretty bad, but a few do it really well). Go find a drm product, or vpn product, or any wifi developer and they will be doing something with crypto. Look at the work by the girl who optimized DES (? irrc, might have been aes) as her high school project.

    That being said, if you think you've got a new encryption algorithm at that age, you will probably see it as an example problem in your crypto classes later on in life. Leave new algorithm to the .gov and .edu institutions that have hundreds of man-years of math research to build from.
  • She is going to need insane computing power one way or the other. If you can convince the local community college to let her use their machines for a sunday she may have a chance. She will need to be able to get multiple machines to run cocurrently (ala MOSIX etc.) but that is a different issue. If she is in the Mpls/StP area, I can offer our machines for this if you want, reply to this and I will post my email.

    Sera

  • not sure but there's a good summer program (Score:4, Informative)

    by BoomTechnology ( 832547 ) on Sunday January 08, 2006 @03:57AM (#14420499) Homepage
    http://www.mathismylife.org/ [mathismylife.org] --CMST (center for math science and technology) has/had a really good summer program in classical cryptanalysis funded by the NSA and taught by employees of the NSA. I took it several summers ago -- very interesting. Very diverse age-group in it, but it was a very challenging course and provides a good base for entering the cryptology field -- they started off with basic mono-alphabetic shifts, and worked their way up to matrix-based algorithms and statistical analysis. At the end there's something crazy like a challenge with 23 different cryptograms that must be solved (that no one almost ever does)...something to look into, though this year it looks like they're having trouble finding a venue.

  • Find a protocol and break it (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The ones in the cryptographic literature tend to be okay, or have very subtle flaws, but there are lots of protocols thought up by inexperienced people that nobody has gotten around to breaking yet. Take a few, and the chances are excellent you can find a flaw in one of them.

    CPRM [4centity.com] might be a bit advanced for high school, but a practical break is an undergraduate homework assignment. (Hint: Assume you have known plaintest for the encrypted media key. How many trial encryptions do you have to do before find

  • If you are serious about finding someone locally who would be able to help mentor, I would try the local university. Depending on what kind of institution is available, you should find at the bare minimum a PHD in computer science who might have some knowledge about the subject who could be a mentor. If your university has a good computer science dept, you might find post graduate students and post doctorate students doing research in this very area with a professor guiding them. Best thing to do would b
    • s/computer science/mathematics/

      and you'll have a chance of finding someone who actually knows what they're talking about.
    • Luckily we live in the NY Metro area within driving distance of a large number of universities. We found a few online lists of programs (
      here [berkeley.edu] and here [avirubin.com]) via a post in the sci.crypto newsgroup.
      • Ask 'em about Elliptic curves and probability-related algorithms - those are both pretty hot in the academic world atm, iirc. Btw, you may need to search through a few before you find a researcher willing to talk - or willing to fill in the blanks (which might take a few months) - but if you find a good one, the problem won't be getting 'em to talk, it'll be getting 'em to shut up about the topic ;-)
      • Oh and don't let those other slashdotters scare you - yeah, it's a big area of research, and there's a lot more info to cover, but she's gotten this far give her some credit! ... after reading the class description, I'm honestly impressed. Good luck!
  • but the NSA has a website just for kids [nsa.gov] that has some puzzles, basic crypto problems, and simple ciphers. They call it the page for "Americas Future Codemakers & Codebreakers". They also have crypto-themed cartoon characters like Rosetta Stone and Decipher Dog.
  • I don't mean to be insulting, but there's no way she could comprehend anything for which she would require security clearances. OK, I suppose it's logically possible, but if she had the mathematics background necessary to it, she wouldn't need your advice for sources of information. Just take her to a university library and look for books in the field from the "Undergraduate Texts in Mathematics" (also called "UTM"s) by the Springer-Verlag publishing house. If she doesn't get that, she's in over her head
    • I can't believe the answers I'm hearing. You are insulting. I just finished seven years of classwork and research and have a ph.d and i have a question for you, mr smartguy, haven't you ever heard of modifying a topic or looking at it in a more creative way. A lot of suggestions are really good and of course anyone can do research at whatever level they are on. High school dropouts buy cars and manage to research what they want.
      No offense,

      Dr peacegoddss

  • Definitely possible (Score:3, Insightful)

    by avorpa ( 115504 ) on Sunday January 08, 2006 @07:45AM (#14421038)
    I think I'm more qualified than most to answer this, since I in fact wrote my first published paper when I was in high school, and it was on cryptography. Most of cryptography is just maths, which is actually more accessible to beginners than other subjects since you don't special lab equipment. I'd say the best way to get into it is to think of a cryptographic problem you'd like to solve, and then just work on it. The problem that got me started was how to prove that you're a member of some group without revealing your identity. There are many different solutions, with different tradeoffs -- so even if a problem is supposedly solved there is often scope for new solutions.

    For an idea of where cryptography research is going these days, she should read eprint.iacr.org. A lot of those papers are pretty technical and heavy going, but it will at least give some starting points.

    The biggest problem I'd see is not finding a feasible problem, but finding a teacher capable of marking it. I know none of my high school teachers could have marked my cryptography research.

  • Some ideas (Score:5, Insightful)

    by swillden ( 191260 ) <shawn-ds@willden.org> on Sunday January 08, 2006 @12:41PM (#14421857) Journal

    Before you can answer that question, you have to figure out what is meant by "research". There's fairly little in the area that professional cryptographers consider to be research that would be accessible to even a very precocious high school student.

    However, it's doubtful that the intention of this project is actually to advance the state of humanity's cryptographic knowledge. Realistically, the goals is to find a challenging and educational project for the student, and something that is not obvious to most non-cryptographers.

    Given appropriate expectations, I think there are lots of things a fairly sophisticated high school student could do that would be worthwhile, particularly if you want to look beyond cipher design. Some of the areas that might be interesting include:

    • Cryptanalysis. Attacking full-blown, real ciphers is not a good place to start, but breaking some reduced-round variants, old, already-broken ciphers, or just researching cryptanalytic techniques could be an excellent project.
    • Protocol design. Much more real-world work is done in this area than on ciphers. Ciphers are really just building blocks, to do something useful you need to build a protocol. Pick a real-world problem, choose an appropriate set of tools (ciphers, hash functions, hardware, etc.) and then design a protocol that solves the problem. Then analyze the protocol, try to identify any weaknesses (it's helpful to study on typical attack routes; some of them are very non-obvious) and then try to fix the weaknesses. By way of example, one problem I used in some classes I taught a few years ago was that of an electronic purse. Given a smart card that can store data, perform calculation, perform 3DES en/decryption and perform SHA-1 hashes, design a secure electronic purse. There are three parties involved, the cardholder, the merchant and the bank (who issues the card and loads the value). Define all of the messages between all of the entities and card and assure that no party can defraud any other.
    • Protocol analysis. Take a real-world crypto protocol, like, say SSL, and analyze it with respect to various attacks. Explain how and why it resists each attack (or not!).
    • Key management. Assume some real-world problem with already-defined protocols and try to come up with a way for the involved parties to distribute/manage/agree upon keys. Then attack it from various perspectives, including that of an insider. Try to strengthen it so that even an insider with full access to the system can't subvert the system.
    • Cipher/protocol implementation. Assuming the student is a capable programmer, an interesting challenge is to implement a cipher or (simple) protocol, then try to prove that the implementation is correct and does not leak information.
    • Attack implementation. Take a known attack, such as the recently-published MD-5 collision attacks, the RSA attacks that prompted the development of OAEP, an attack on some reduced-round cipher variant, the SSL man-in-the-middle attack, WEP cracking, etc. -- there are thousands of options -- and try to implement it. Note that many of the attacks require a great deal of statistics, and are probably beyond most gifted high school students, but there are plenty that are accessible (though this also requires programming skills).

  • I went to a Magnet high school ( http://mbhs.edu/departments/magnet/ [mbhs.edu]) (a public school that takes in the top 100 students from the county to teach them an advanced curriculum) and part of the requirements for earning a Magnet diploma was to do a Senior Research Project (SRP) that sounds very much like ASR. To find a mentor (I wanted to do theoretical computer science, I had done some independent research on graph theory in my own time) I emailed a professor at the University of Maryland and worked over my 1

  • Why not the more open area of information leakage? (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Cryptography in its modern form certainly has areas an exceptional high school student could explore, but I suspect most students would be daunted or bored by most work in it.

    However there's lots of exciting forms of information leakage exploits that a high school student with a modicum of math & computer background could explore, especially if they spent a little while studying an introductory machine learning or information theory textbook. For example:

    1. crack passwords by listening t
  • Ask the math department of your nearest univeristy for help.

    A true reasearch project might be somewhat of an undertaking, but
    they can probably find something appropriate.

    BTW - don't cheat yourself of trying Simon Singh's CD-rom
    on cryptology: http://www.simonsingh.net/Shop_-_Crypto_CD-ROM.htm l [simonsingh.net]
  • If you're in the DC area, you can check out NSA's <a href="http://www.nsa.gov/museum/index.cfm">cryptol ogy museum</a>. I haven't been since I worked up there, but I remember it being far more in depth than you'd expect.
  • I was going to recommend reading Singh's book (see link) but it seems it was the course text so ...

    Perhaps something a little less maths-y (or math-y if you're US-ian). She could study the use of PGP, the basics behind the cryptography, it's place in current email systems, historical export restrictions, why it's not used more, it's cipher strengths, how many nano-seconds it takes the NSA to crack it.

    Ask Zimmerman to mentor it! Worth a shot?!

    The Code Book: Simon Singh - http://tinyurl.com/d5zjs [tinyurl.com]
    Wikipedia ent

  • Two essays, and a pointer (Score:4, Informative)

    by woefulhc ( 669636 ) <woefulhc@@@gmail...com> on Sunday January 08, 2006 @11:32PM (#14424723) Homepage

    Just thought I'd toss in my few cents.

    Bruce Schneier has a couple of essays that you might want to have your daughter check out. (Hopefully she already knows the info in the first, but....)

    Here [schneier.com] is his imput on how to get into the crypto field.

    Why is crypto so hard [schneier.com] .

    If you or she aren't so keen on working with a local college/university math/CS department, I second the advice to hit up Phil Zimmermann. His site [philzimmermann.com] lists a number of ways to contact him. It also talks about his current project. (I found Mr. Zimmermann to be very gracious. I think the worst he would do is say no. More likely he would either agree or suggest someone as a alternative.)

  • I being in the non-profit sector with the increasing demand for better data security measures maybe she would be interested in researching ways to secure private information in databases.

    The most obvious method is to encrypt the data but in order to selectively retrieve it becomes a problem (and over the years we do come back to our archives).

    Another method I think might be great, is a way to just encrypt/protect the sensitive/identifying fields in a database and leave the statistical data unencrypted (

  • She could research the early history of cryptology (i.e., World War 2). Although I haven't read the book yet, When Computers Were Human [amazon.com] could serve as a starting point.
  • This may or may not be useful to you, but here's a list of current research projects my college (in the UK) is undertaking at the moment. It might give some idea of what's considered interesting areas in crypto:

    http://www.isg.rhul.ac.uk/research/projects.shtml# current [rhul.ac.uk]

    Personally, I think protocol analysis is pretty interesting, as the world gets increasingly networked up. Or investigate the practical effects of the recent breaks in hashing algorithms on other products that use the hashes (like digital si
  • Start with the American Cryptogram Association [cryptogram.org], a non-profit organization of cryptographers that has been around for decades, dedicated to promoting the hobby and art of cryptanalysis. Alghough they concentrate on simple stuff (you have to start somewhere) the group is full of members that have "been around" and know their stuff!

    Their resources page has links to everything you'll need to get started, from stuff covering cryptographic history to online lessons teaching you how analyze ciphers, and not just

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