Maura Paterson

Authentication codes and related structures

Issues around the authentication of messages are something we face on a day-to-day basis: is this email really from my head of department, or is someone trying to scam me? Authentication codes are combinatorial structures that were developed in order to study how to provide authentication in an unconditionally secure setting, where you do not wish to rely on any assumptions about the computational ability of an adversary. They have close links to combinatorial designs and other related structures. In this talk we will give some background on authentication codes before going on to discuss some newer combinatorial structures that have been the subject of recent attention in this area.