Talks for II. gimnazija Maribor (in Slovene and English)

In the second week of January Nastja Cepak and Amar Bapić gave 45min talks for high schoolers on the topic of cryptography for a video series called “Matematika s kavča” hosted by II. gimnazija Maribor.

dr. Nastja Cepak: O asimetrični kriptografiji in digitalnih potrdilih (in Slovene)

Človeštvo že tisočletja uporablja šifriranje, vedno pa se srečujemo z istim problemom: kako varno izmenjati šifrirne ključe? Učinkovit odgovor na to vprašanje smo uspeli najti šele v 70. letih s prvimi asimetričnimi kritografskimi algoritmi. Pogledali si bomo, na podlagi česa delujeta dva najširše uporabljena algoritma in kako z njima dodelimo digitalno identiteto osebam, napravam, procesom in še čemu.

Amar Bapić: Zodiac Killer’s Cipher

Cryptography has many real-life applications like electronic commerce, chip-based payment cards, digital currencies, computer passwords, military communications, etc. Sometimes we find ourselves in situations in which one would be surprised to find mathematics, and that is in crime scene investigations. In this presentation, we will talk about the infamous American serial killer known as “The Zodiac Killer”, who used to send encrypted messages to local newspapers taunting the authorities. We will talk about these ciphers, their structure, and the eventual breaking of one of them recently in December 2019. Throughout the presentation, we will also give a short introduction to symmetric-key cryptography.