Introduction A fundamental objective of cryptography is to enable two persons to communicate over an insecure channel (a public channel such as the internet) in such a way that any other person is unable to recover their message (called the plaintext ) from what is sent in its place over the channel (the ciphertext ). The transformation of the plaintext into the ciphertext is called encryption , or enciphering. Encryption-decryption is the most ancient cryptographic activity (ciphers already existed four centuries b.c.), but its nature has deeply changed with the invention of computers, because the cryptanalysis (the activity of the third person, the eavesdropper, who aims at recovering the message) can use their power. The encryption algorithm takes as input the plaintext and an encryption key K E , and it outputs the ciphertext. If the encryption key is secret, then we speak of conventional cryptography , of private key cryptography , or of symmetric cryptography . In practice, the principle of conventional cryptography relies on the sharing of a private key between the sender of a message (often called Alice in cryptography) and its receiver (often called Bob). If, on the contrary, the encryption key is public, then we speak of public key cryptography . Public key cryptography appeared in the literature in the late 1970s.

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Boolean Models and Methods in Mathematics, Computer Science, and Engineering: Boolean Functions for Cryptography and Error-Correcting Codes

The study of permutation groups has always been closely associated with that of highly symmetric structures. The objects considered here are countably infinite, but have only finitely many different substructures of any given finite size. They are precisely those structures which are determined by first-order logical axioms together with the assumption of countability. This book concerns such structures, their substructures and their automorphism groups. A wide range of techniques are used: group theory, combinatorics, Baire category and measure among them. The book arose from lectures given at a research symposium and retains their informal style, whilst including as well many recent results from a variety of sources. It concludes with exercises and unsolved research problems.

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Oligomorphic permutation groups

A classification of the maximal subgroups of the finite alternating and symmetric groups

Algebraic coding theory is a new and rapidly developing subject, popular for its many practical applications and for its fascinatingly rich mathematical structure. This book provides an elementary yet rigorous introduction to the theory of error-correcting codes. Based on courses given by the author over several years to advanced undergraduates and first-year graduated students, this guide includes a large number of exercises, all with solutions, making the book highly suitable for individual study.

A first course in coding theory, by Raymond Hill. Pp 251. £12·50. 1986. ISBN 0-19-853803-0 (Oxford University Press)

We propose three private information retrieval (PIR) protocols for distributed storage systems (DSSs), where data is stored using an arbitrary linear code. The first two protocols, named Protocol 1 and Protocol 2, achieve privacy for the scenario with noncolluding nodes. Protocol 1 requires a file size that is exponential in the number of files in the system, while Protocol 2 requires a file size that is independent of the number of files and is hence simpler. We prove that, for certain linear codes, Protocol 1 achieves the maximum distance separable (MDS) PIR capacity, i.e., the maximum PIR rate (the ratio of the amount of retrieved stored data per unit of downloaded data) for a DSS that uses an MDS code to store any given (finite and infinite) number of files, and Protocol 2 achieves the asymptotic MDS-PIR capacity (with infinitely large number of files in the DSS). In particular, we provide a necessary and a sufficient condition for a code to achieve the MDS-PIR capacity with Protocols 1 and 2 and prove that cyclic codes, Reed–Muller (RM) codes, and a class of distance-optimal local reconstruction codes achieve both the finite MDS-PIR capacity (i.e., with any given number of files) and the asymptotic MDS-PIR capacity with Protocols 1 and 2, respectively. Furthermore, we present a third protocol, Protocol 3, for the scenario with multiple colluding nodes, which can be seen as an improvement of a protocol recently introduced by Freij-Hollanti et al. . Similar to the noncolluding case, we provide a necessary and a sufficient condition to achieve the maximum possible PIR rate of Protocol 3. Moreover, we provide a particular class of codes that is suitable for this protocol and show that RM codes achieve the maximum possible PIR rate for the protocol. For all three protocols, we present an algorithm to optimize their PIR rates.

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Achieving Maximum Distance Separable Private Information Retrieval Capacity With Linear Codes

A permutation representation of a free group

Information sets and partial permutation decoding for codes from finite geometries

We determine to what extent permutation decoding can be used for the codes from desarguesian projective and affine planes. We define the notion of s-PD-sets to correct s errors, and construct some specific small sets for s = 2 and 3 for desarguesian planes of prime order.

Partial permutation decoding for codes from finite planes

On relations between the classical and the Kazhdan¿Lusztig representations of symmetric groups and associated Hecke algebras

It is well known that the Mathieu groups M12 and M24 contain PSL(2,11) and PSL(2, 23) in their natural permutation representations of degrees 12 and 24, respectively (see, e.g., [2]). It is therefore natural to consider the permutation representation of H = ?SL(d+\\,q) of degree v = (g d + 1 l ) / (gl ) on the set Q of points of projective d-space PG(d, q), and to ask what subgroups of Sym (fi) contain H. While nothing seems to be known for d = 1, we shall answer this question when d ^ 2.

T. P. McDonough

Papers

A permutation representation of a free group

Information sets and partial permutation decoding for codes from finite geometries

Partial permutation decoding for codes from finite planes

On relations between the classical and the Kazhdan¿Lusztig representations of symmetric groups and associated Hecke algebras

On the Maximality of Psl(D + 1, q), d ≥ 2