Some Notes on Code-Based Cryptography

This thesis presents new cryptanalytic results in several areas of coding-based cryptography. In addition, we also investigate the possibility of using convolutional codes in code-based public-key cryptography. The first algorithm that we present is an information-set decoding algorithm, aiming towards the problem of decoding random linear codes. We apply the generalized birthday technique to information-set decoding, improving the computational complexity over previous approaches. Next, we present a new version of the McEliece public-key cryptosystem based on convolutional codes. The original construction uses Goppa codes, which is an algebraic code family admitting a well-defined code structure. In the two constructions proposed, large parts of randomly generated parity checks are used. By increasing the entropy of the generator matrix, this presumably makes structured attacks more difficult. Following this, we analyze a McEliece variant based on quasi-cylic MDPC codes. We show that when the underlying code construction has an even dimension, the system is susceptible to, what we call, a squaring attack. Our results show that the new squaring attack allows for great complexity improvements over previous attacks on this particular McEliece construction. Then, we introduce two new techniques for finding low-weight polynomial multiples. Firstly, we propose a general technique based on a reduction to the minimum-distance problem in coding, which increases the multiplicity of the low-weight codeword by extending the code. We use this algorithm to break some of the instances used by the TCHo cryptosystem. Secondly, we propose an algorithm for finding weight-4 polynomials. By using the generalized birthday technique in conjunction with increasing the multiplicity of the low-weight polynomial multiple, we obtain a much better complexity than previously known algorithms. Lastly, two new algorithms for the learning parities with noise (LPN) problem are proposed. The first one is a general algorithm, applicable to any instance of LPN. The algorithm performs favorably compared to previously known algorithms, breaking the 80-bit security of the widely used (512,1/8) instance. The second one focuses on LPN instances over a polynomial ring, when the generator polynomial is reducible. Using the algorithm, we break an 80-bit security instance of the Lapin cryptosystem

Collisions: drawing in the digital age

This research outlines the reconfiguration of the creative act of drawing through physical practice as a response to mass culture. This practice takes place in the context of developing digital technologies, culminating in metadrawing. Metadrawing is defined as the integration of the post-digital collapse of media specificity in the visual arts. This research posits metadrawing as a descriptor for the paradigm shift between the physical act of drawing in pre-digital mass culture and the principles of drawing incorporated into digital technologies. Through this shift, drawing has become an artistic act that is no longer working to collapse media divisions, and now operates within and without these divisions, destabilised by digital technologies. This research examines drawing as a history of innovations and responses to shifts in technologies and their applications. Questions of genre, form and medium are subsequently downplayed for an interdisciplinary approach. High and low are no longer distinct, as the internet search engine is adopted into the artist's toolbox, alongside the digital camera and animation software. The many accessible and disposable images are integrated as raw matter, to fossick and sift through. Accompanying studio research operates within the interdisciplinary freedoms of the metadrawing. Approaches to quotation, appropriation, pastiche, irony, detachment and sincerity are explored through a rigorous drawing practice, resulting in a vast, multilayered body of work. This self-reflexive and intuitive practice incorporates numerous ciphers into its many suspended, but interrelated narratives. Beyond the physical level, the work operates on an intertextual level, moving between the metaphysics of genre and previously separated art forms to create a reconfigured history, unhampered by previous distinctions and boundaries of media and form. This research posits the act of drawing as a reaction to, or divergence from, the dominant techno-capitalist status quo, treating the tactile experiences of studio practice as subversive, transgressive, and erotic. This research explores the subjectivity and the subjective agency of the artist. Drawing is therefore defined as a process of unrepeatability, a process that, while no longer necessary for picture making, still forms a crucial and engaging tier of the visual arts. Drawing’s divergence from the commercialised intangibility of the digital has revitalized its practitioners, demanding a reconsideration of what is means to draw today. This tension is explored through the different methods of studio practice, on the level of the personal-biological, the erotic, and in terms of collision and materiality. Specific images are selected through criteria directly linked with the subjective agency of the artist, and reconfigured through artistic practice, creating a new imbrication of the raw image matter

1965 Firebrand

https://scholar.dominican.edu/yearbooks-1960-1969/1005/thumbnail.jp

Music in the international market : differences and distribution : the case of Italy and China

Historically there has been limited transmission of musical ideas between Italy and China. When music travels between cultures it is subject to change and transformation and this cultural exchange is the foundation for popular music as we know it today. Within this dissertation, we will firstly analyse what makes music enjoyable for people through an analysis of genre. Then, perform a comparative analysis of their respective regional music genres and analyse similarities between them. Through this we can understand the similarities between the two markets and understand possible modes of entry for Italian musicians into the Chinese market. The motivation for this analysis is to ascertain whether there is a space for Italian musicians to find an audience in China. By understand the similarities between the countries we can find elements within Italian musicians’ product that will reduce the amount of alienation within the Chinese market.Tradicionalmente, tem sido reduzida a transmissão de noções e conceitos de música entre a Itália e a China. Quando a música viaja entre culturas está sujeita a mudanças e transformações, sendo este intercâmbio cultural a base da música popular tal como a conhecemos hoje. Com esta dissertação, pretende-se, em primeiro lugar, analisar o que leva a música ter um efeito positivo nas pessoas, através de uma análise de género. De seguida, far-se-á uma análise comparativa entre os diferentes géneros musicais regionais, analisando as semelhanças entre aqueles. Com este estudo, será possível compreender as semelhanças entre os dois países, e perceber como é que a música italiana poderá entrar no contexto chinês. O objetivo desta análise é verificar se existe público na China para os músicos italianos. Ao compreender as semelhanças entre estes dois países, poder-se-á encontrar elementos no espectro musical italiano que contribua para reduzir uma elevada indiferença à música italiana no mercado chinês

The Winonan

https://openriver.winona.edu/thewinonan1990s/1129/thumbnail.jp

23.2 The Poetic Eye

Rampike Vol. 23 / No. 2 (The Poetic Eye issue): Jaap Blonk, Barrie Tullet , Gustave Morin, Gregory Betts, Gary Barwin, Melody Sumner-Carnahan, W.M. Sutherland, Dennis Tourbin, Michael Winkler, Fernando Aguiar, Carol Stetser, Marilyn Rosenberg, Stan Rogal, Keith Garebian, Wendell Mayo, Andrew M. Niss, Lucas Crawford, Richard Kostelanetz, Antoni Miro, Amin Rehman, Lorenzo Menoud, LeRoy Gorman, Reed Altemus, Dennis Cooley, Mac MacArthur, Jürgen Olbrich, Nico Vassilakis, Elke Grundman, Anti-Oedipus, Aditya Bahl, Barrie Walsh, Derek Beaulieu, John M. Bennett, Joseph A. Brown & Terry Trowbridge, Vittore Baroni, Karl Kempton, Sergio Monteiro de Almeida, Serse Luigetti, Aaron Daigle, Gerry Shikatani, tENTATIVELY a cONVENIENCE, Stephanie Strange, John Nyman, Helen Hajnoczky, Ken Hunt, John Massey, Andrew Topel, rob mclennan & derek beaulieu & Kit Dobson, & bpNichol, Karl Jirgens, Fausto Bedoya. Front Cover Art: Jaap Blonk. Back Cover Art: Gustave Morin

The social poetics of analog virtual worlds : toying with alternate realities

textWhile online virtual worlds draw increasingly wider audiences of players and scholars alike, offline games continue to evolve into more complex and socially layered forms as well. This dissertation argues that virtual worlds need not exist as online, digital environments alone and probes three genres of non-digital gaming for evidence of the virtual: tabletop role-playing games, murder-mystery events, and localized alternate reality games. More broadly, then, this dissertation is about deliberate make-belief: practiced by adults, taken seriously by participants, engaged with for long hours at a time, performed in public, and integrated into everyday social relationships. Drawing on scholars who study games as social activities (McGonigal 2006, Montola 2012) and social institutions (Goffman 1974, Searle 1995), I present three ethnographic case studies that illustrate how complex forms of social gaming can conjure and sustain environments best understood as analog virtual worlds. Through the widespread use of mobile technologies and the concerted efforts of innovators, game spaces are increasingly permeating our everyday lives on- and offline. This dissolving boundary demands anthropologists to revisit questions of how, where, and with whom we play games. Dovetailing Martin Heidegger’s notions of worlding and poiesis to the semiotics of C.S. Peirce, this dissertation investigates how new forms of social gaming demonstrate the same qualities of shared intentionality, intersubjectivity, and performance essential to the production of new social meaning and cultural forms. Following, I situate the bold ethnographic case studies of make-belief in dialogue with scholars who figure exclusively online virtual worlds (Castronova 2005, Taylor 2006, Boellstorff 2008) and argue that analyzing both on- and offline virtual worlds together can help scholars better understand the fundamental nature of social interaction and shared intentionality, those everyday mechanisms that both sustain personal relationships on the one hand and maintain our broadest and most serious social institutions on the other.Anthropolog

Computer Science To Go (CS2Go): Developing a course to introduce and teach Computer Science and Computational Thinking to secondary school students

Computer Science To Go (CS2Go) is a course designed to teach Transition Year Students about Computer Science and Computational Thinking. This project has been conducted over two years and this thesis charts the development of the course from the initial research stage, through the lesson creation sections to the testing and evaluation of the course material. Over 80 hours of engaging, informative and challenging material has been developed for use in the classroom. Alongside the lesson plans, assessment and monitoring tools have been created, including a novel tool to assess students Computational Thinking skills. The content was tested in two major studies after an initial pilot study. This initial pilot study proved useful in constructing the full CS2Go course. Overall the course has been well received with teachers and students engaging well with the content. A web portal has also been created to allow for easy dissemination of all the CS2Go material. The further development of this web portal will turn CS2Go into a one-stop shop for teachers and educators hoping to find CS teaching material