Date: October 25, 2018

Speaker: Charlie Meyers

Title: Privacy and Illegal Numbers: The Mathematics of Encryption

Abstract: Did you know that hundreds of people use the Internet everyday for everything from e-commerce to sharing spicy memes with friends? One of the technologies that underpins this is encryption– the tool that allows data to be privately shared between two endpoints. We will briefly talk about the history of encryption from the Caesar cipher to the enigma machine before delving into modern cryptographic systems. In particular, we will look at how credit cards are secured, how websites secure traffic between host and users, the ins-and-outs of public key cryptography, and its uses in email and instant messaging (like PGP, Signal, or Whatsapp). This talk will be given by a graduate of the NYCCT math program and current student at the Graduate Center’s MS in Data Science program. We will spend the last 20 minutes discussing graduate school, the NYCCT math program (from the perspective of a graduate), and employment tips.