As a beginning graduate student, I recall being frustrated by a general lack of acces sible sources from which I could learn about (theoretical) cryptography. I remember wondering: why aren't there more books presenting the basics of cryptography at an introductory level? Jumping ahead almost a decade later, as a faculty member my graduate students now ask me: what is the best resource for learning about (various topics in) cryptography? This monograph is intended to serve as an answer to these 1 questions - at least with regard to digital signature schemes. Given the above motivation, this book has been written with a beginninggraduate student in mind: a student who is potentially interested in doing research in the ?eld of cryptography, and who has taken an introductory course on the subject, but is not sure where to turn next. Though intended primarily for that audience, I hope that advanced graduate students and researchers will ?nd the book useful as well. In addition to covering various constructions of digital signature schemes in a uni?ed framework, this text also serves as a compendium of various "folklore" results that are, perhaps, not as well known as they should be. This book could also serve as a textbook for a graduate seminar on advanced cryptography; in such a class, I expect the entire book could be covered at a leisurely pace in one semester with perhaps some time left over for excursions into related topics.

Production Grids in Asia: Applications, Developments and Global Ties, an edited volume, is based on ISGC (International Symposium on Grid Computing), one of the most prestigious annual events in Asia. It brings together scientists and engineers worldwide to exchange ideas, present challenges/solutions, and introduce future development in the field of Grid Computing. ISGC 2008 was held at Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan in April 2008. The edited proceedings present international projects in Grid operation, Grid Middleware and e-Science applications. Leading Grid projects from Asia-Pacific are also covered. Production Grids in Asia: Applications, Developments and Global Ties is designed for a professional audience composed of industry researchers and practitioners within the Grid community. This volume is also suitable for advanced-level students in computer science.

The book is the first thorough overview of the first important steps to develop a worldwide virtual observatory so that, in the future, it could be easier to "dial-up" a part of the sky than wait many months to access a telescope. The articles in this book present details on the status of the first efforts to develop a standardized framework for the virtual observatory, including steps towards completion and deployment of technical infrastructure, uptake by data providers worldwide, and utilization by the scientific community.

The theory of parsing is an important application area of the theory of formal languages and automata. The evolution of modem high-level programming languages created a need for a general and theoretically dean methodology for writing compilers for these languages. It was perceived that the compilation process had to be "syntax-directed", that is, the functioning of a programming language compiler had to be defined completely by the underlying formal syntax of the language. A program text to be compiled is "parsed" according to the syntax of the language, and the object code for the program is generated according to the semantics attached to the parsed syntactic entities. Context-free grammars were soon found to be the most convenient formalism for describing the syntax of programming languages, and accordingly methods for parsing context-free languages were devel oped. Practical considerations led to the definition of various kinds of restricted context-free grammars that are parsable by means of efficient deterministic linear-time algorithms.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 9th Chinese Conference on Biometric Recognition, CCBR 2014, held in Shenyang, China, in November 2014. The 60 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from among 90 submissions. The papers focus on face, fingerprint and palmprint, vein biometrics, iris and ocular biometrics, behavioral biometrics, application and system of biometrics, multi-biometrics and information fusion, other biometric recognition and processing.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 16th International Workshop on Computer Algebra in Scientific Computing, CASC 2014, held in Warsaw, Poland, in September 2014. The 33 full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected for inclusion in this book. The papers address issues such as Studies in polynomial algebra are represented by contributions devoted to factoring sparse bivariate polynomials using the priority queue, the construction of irreducible polynomials by using the Newton index, real polynomial root finding by means of matrix and polynomial iterations, application of the eigenvalue method with symmetry for solving polynomial systems arising in the vibration analysis of mechanical structures with symmetry properties, application of Groebner systems for computing the (absolute) reduction number of polynomial ideals, the application of cylindrical algebraic decomposition for solving the quantifier elimination problems, certification of approximate roots of overdetermined and singular polynomial systems via the recovery of an exact rational univariate representation from approximate numerical data, new parallel algorithms for operations on univariate polynomials (multi-point evaluation, interpolation) based on subproduct tree techniques.

This book constitutes the revised selected papers of the Second International Conference on Networked Systems, NETYS 2014, held in Marrakech, Morocco, in May 2014. The 20 full papers and the 6 short papers presented together with 2 keynotes were carefully reviewed and selected from 80 submissions. They address major topics such as multi-core architectures; concurrent and distributed algorithms; middleware environments; storage clusters; social networks; peer-to-peer networks; sensor networks; wireless and mobile networks; as well as privacy and security measures to protect such networked systems and data from attack and abuse.

One of the world's leading problems in the field of national security is protection of borders and borderlands. This book addresses multiple issues on advanced innovative methods of multi-level control of both ground (UGVs) and aerial drones (UAVs). Those objects combined with innovative algorithms become autonomous objects capable of patrolling chosen borderland areas by themselves and automatically inform the operator of the system about potential place of detection of a specific incident. This is achieved by using sophisticated methods of generation of non-collision trajectory for those types of objects and enabling automatic integration of both ground and aerial unmanned vehicles. The topics included in this book also cover presentation of complete information and communication technology (ICT) systems capable of control, observation and detection of various types of incidents and threats. This book is a valuable source of information for constructors and developers of such solutions for uniformed services. Scientists and researchers involved in computer vision, image processing, data fusion, control algorithms or IC can find many valuable suggestions and solutions. Multiple challenges for such systems are also presented.

The 4th FTRA International Conference on Information Technology Convergence and Services (ITCS-12) will be held in Gwangju, Korea on September 6 - 8, 2012. The ITCS-12 will be the most comprehensive conference focused on the various aspects of advances in information technology convergence, applications, and services. The ITCS-12 will provide an opportunity for academic and industry professionals to discuss the latest issues and progress in the area of ITCS. In addition, the conference will publish high quality papers which are closely related to the various theories, modeling, and practical applications in ITCS. Furthermore, we expect that the conference and its publications will be a trigger for further related research and technology improvements in this important subject. The ITCS-12 is the next event in a series of highly successful International Conference on Information Technology Convergence and Services(ITCS-11), previously held in Gwangju, Korea on October, 2011.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Collective Intelligence, ICCCI 2014, held in Seoul, Korea, in September 2014. The 70 full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 205 submissions. They address topics such as knowledge integration, data mining for collective processing, fuzzy, modal and collective systems, nature inspired systems, language processing systems, social networks and semantic web, agent and multi-agent systems, classification and clustering methods, multi-dimensional data processing, Web systems, intelligent decision making, methods for scheduling, image and video processing, collective intelligence in web systems, computational swarm intelligence, cooperation and collective knowledge.

The research presented in this book discusses how to efficiently retrieve track and trace information for an item of interest that took a certain path through a complex network of manufacturers, wholesalers, retailers, and consumers. To this end, a super-ordinate system called "Discovery Service" is designed that has to handle large amounts of data, high insert-rates, and a high number of queries that are submitted to the discovery service. An example that is used throughout this book is the European pharmaceutical supply chain, which faces the challenge that more and more counterfeit medicinal products are being introduced. Between October and December 2008, more than 34 million fake drug pills were detected at customs control at the borders of the European Union. These fake drugs can put lives in danger as they were supposed to fight cancer, take effect as painkiller or antibiotics, among others. The concepts described in this book can be adopted for supply chain management use cases other than track and trace, such as recall, supply chain optimization, or supply chain analytics.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 6th International Symposium on Search-Based Software Engineering, SSBSE 2014, held in Fortaleza, Brazil. The 14 revised full papers presented together with 2 keynote addresses, 1 invited talk, 1 short paper, 3 papers of the graduate track, and 4 challenge track papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 51 submissions. Search Based Software Engineering (SBSE) studies the application of meta-heuristic optimization techniques to various software engineering problems, ranging from requirements engineering to software testing and maintenance.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Parallel and Distributed Computing, Euro-Par 2014, held in Porto, Portugal, in August 2014. The 68 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 267 submissions. The papers are organized in 15 topical sections: support tools environments; performance prediction and evaluation; scheduling and load balancing; high-performance architectures and compilers; parallel and distributed data management; grid, cluster and cloud computing; green high performance computing; distributed systems and algorithms; parallel and distributed programming; parallel numerical algorithms; multicore and manycore programming; theory and algorithms for parallel computation; high performance networks and communication; high performance and scientific applications; and GPU and accelerator computing.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Graph Transformations, ICGT 2014, held in York, UK, in July 2014. The 17 papers and 1 invited paper presented were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on verification, meta-modelling and model transformations, rewriting and applications in biology, graph languages and graph transformation, and applications.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Artificial General Intelligence, AGI 2014, held in Quebec City, QC, Canada, in August 2014. The 22 papers and 8 posters were carefully reviewed and selected from 65 submissions. Researchers have recognized the necessity of returning to the original goals of the field by treating intelligence as a whole. Increasingly, there is a call for a transition back to confronting the more difficult issues of "human-level intelligence" and more broadly artificial general intelligence. AGI research differs from the ordinary AI research by stressing on the versatility and wholeness of intelligence and by carrying out the engineering practice according to an outline of a system comparable to the human mind in a certain sense. The AGI conference series has played and continues to play, a significant role in this resurgence of research on artificial intelligence in the deeper, original sense of the term of "artificial intelligence". The conferences encourage interdisciplinary research based on different understandings of intelligence and exploring different approaches.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Analytical and Stochastic Modelling Techniques and Applications, ASMTA 2014, held in Budapest, Hungary, in June/July 2014. The 18 papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 27 submissions. The papers discuss the latest developments in analytical, numerical and simulation algorithms for stochastic systems, including Markov processes, queueing networks, stochastic Petri nets, process algebras, game theory, etc.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Reversible Computation, RC 2014, held in Kyoto, Japan, in July 2014. The 14 contributions presented together with three invited talks were carefully reviewed and selected from 27 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on automata for reversible computation; notation and languages for reversible computation; synthesis and optimization for reversible circuits; validation and representation of quantum logic.

The two volume-set, LNCS 8616 and LNCS 8617, constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 34th Annual International Cryptology Conference, CRYPTO 2014, held in Santa Barbara, CA, USA, in August 2014. The 60 revised full papers presented in LNCS 8616 and LNCS 8617 were carefully reviewed and selected from 227 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on symmetric encryption and PRFs; formal methods; hash functions; groups and maps; lattices; asymmetric encryption and signatures; side channels and leakage resilience; obfuscation; FHE; quantum cryptography; foundations of hardness; number-theoretic hardness; information-theoretic security; key exchange and secure communication; zero knowledge; composable security; secure computation - foundations; secure computation - implementations.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-conference proceedings of the 5th International Workshop, COSADE 2014, held in Paris, France, in April 2014. The 20 revised full papers presented together with two invited talks were carefully selected from 51 submissions and collect truly existing results in cryptographic engineering, from concepts to artifacts, from software to hardware, from attack to countermeasure.

The European Summer School in Logic, Language and Information (ESSLLI) is organized every year by the Association for Logic, Language and Information (FoLLI) in different sites around Europe. The main focus of ESSLLI is on the interface between linguistics, logic and computation. ESSLLI offers foundational, introductory and advanced courses, as well as workshops, covering a wide variety of topics within the three areas of interest: Language and Computation, Language and Logic, and Logic and Computation. The 16 papers presented in this volume have been selected among 44 papers presented by talks or posters at the Student Sessions of the 24th and 25th editions of ESSLLI, held in 2012 in Opole, Poland, and 2013 in Dusseldorf, Germany. The papers are extended versions of the versions presented, and have all been subjected to a second round of blind peer review.

Content protection and digital rights management (DRM) are fields that receive a lot of attention: content owners require systems that protect and maximize their revenues; consumers want backwards compatibility, while they fear that content owners will spy on their viewing habits; and academics are afraid that DRM may be a barrier to knowledge sharing. DRM technologies have a poor reputation and are not yet trusted. This book describes the key aspects of content protection and DRM systems, the objective being to demystify the technology and techniques. In the first part of the book, the author builds the foundations, with sections that cover the rationale for protecting digital video content; video piracy; current toolboxes that employ cryptography, watermarking, tamper resistance, and rights expression languages; different ways to model video content protection; and DRM. In the second part, he describes the main existing deployed solutions, including video ecosystems; how video is protected in broadcasting; descriptions of DRM systems, such as Microsoft's DRM and Apple's FairPlay; techniques for protecting prerecorded content distributed using DVDs or Blu-ray; and future methods used to protect content within the home network. The final part of the book looks towards future research topics, and the key problem of interoperability. While the book focuses on protecting video content, the DRM principles and technologies described are also used to protect many other types of content, such as ebooks, documents and games. The book will be of value to industrial researchers and engineers developing related technologies, academics and students in information security, cryptography and media systems, and engaged consumers.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Mathematical Software, ICMS 2014, held in Seoul, South Korea, in August 2014. The 108 papers included in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 150 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections named: invited; exploration; group; coding; topology; algebraic; geometry; surfaces; reasoning; special; Groebner; triangular; parametric; interfaces and general.

The cryptosystems based on the Integer Factorization Problem (IFP), the Discrete Logarithm Problem (DLP) and the Elliptic Curve Discrete Logarithm Problem (ECDLP) are essentially the only three types of practical public-key cryptosystems in use. The security of these cryptosystems relies heavily on these three infeasible problems, as no polynomial-time algorithms exist for them so far. However, polynomial-time quantum algorithms for IFP, DLP and ECDLP do exist, provided that a practical quantum computer exists. Quantum Attacks on Public-Key Cryptosystems presemts almost all known quantum computing based attacks on public-key cryptosystems, with an emphasis on quantum algorithms for IFP, DLP, and ECDLP. It also discusses some quantum resistant cryptosystems to replace the IFP, DLP and ECDLP based cryptosystems. This book is intended to be used either as a graduate text in computing, communications and mathematics, or as a basic reference in the field.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Developments in Language Theory, DLT 2014, held in Ekaterinburg, Russia, in August 2014. The 22 full papers and 5 short papers presented together with 3 invited talks were carefully reviewed and selected from 38 submissions. The papers are organized in topical subjects on Grammars, Acceptors and Transducers for Words, Trees and Graphs, Algebraic Theories of Automata, Algorithmic, Combinatorial and Algebraic Properties of Words and Languages, Variable Length Codes, Symbolic Dynamics, Cellular Automata, Polyominoes and Multidimensional Patterns, Decidability Questions, Image Manipulation and Compression, Efficient Text Algorithms, Relationships to Cryptography, Concurrency, Complexity Theory and Logic, Bio-Inspired Computing and Quantum Computing.

In this book, the following three approaches to data analysis are presented: - Test Theory, founded by Sergei V. Yablonskii (1924-1998); the first publications appeared in 1955 and 1958, - Rough Sets, founded by Zdzislaw I. Pawlak (1926-2006); the first publications appeared in 1981 and 1982, - Logical Analysis of Data, founded by Peter L. Hammer (1936-2006); the first publications appeared in 1986 and 1988. These three approaches have much in common, but researchers active in one of these areas often have a limited knowledge about the results and methods developed in the other two. On the other hand, each of the approaches shows some originality and we believe that the exchange of knowledge can stimulate further development of each of them. This can lead to new theoretical results and real-life applications and, in particular, new results based on combination of these three data analysis approaches can be expected. - Logical Analysis of Data, founded by Peter L. Hammer (1936-2006); the first publications appeared in 1986 and 1988. These three approaches have much in common, but researchers active in one of these areas often have a limited knowledge about the results and methods developed in the other two. On the other hand, each of the approaches shows some originality and we believe that the exchange of knowledge can stimulate further development of each of them. This can lead to new theoretical results and real-life applications and, in particular, new results based on combination of these three data analysis approaches can be expected. These three approaches have much in common, but researchers active in one of these areas often have a limited knowledge about the results and methods developed in the other two. On the other hand, each of the approaches shows some originality and we believe that the exchange of knowledge can stimulate further development of each of them. This can lead to new theoretical results and real-life applications and, in particular, new results based on combination of these three data analysis approaches can be expected.