Engineering Service/Events

Obfuscating and Hiding Encrypted Data Talk

I really enjoyed this opportunity since my emphasis within the Computer Science major is security. I have taken both Cryptography courses, so I was able to follow the aspects of Cryptography mentioned.

I agree with one of the after-talk comments that their presentation opened up with the idea of “Plausible Deniability” but they did not continue explaining how there will be, without a doubt, plausible deniability through their process. They did a great job answering this question, though, so it did not appear to be an actual issue with their research!

Overall, I thought it was a great talk and I liked the combination of Mathematics and Computer Science since both aspects were essential in order to produce a product that is plausible both in theory and in practice. It would be interesting to see the usage of this structure for encryption with different compression algorithms in order to get a feel for how changing the “black box” would allow for different types of applications (such as image encryption or video encryption). The students should be super proud of what they have been able to complete in a year and I am grateful that they were able to share this research with other students and faculty!