First year of the SECCLO programme concludes with a summer school.
In the SECCLO Summer School (5 ECTS) students work as groups on a timely topic in information security. The school is organized in May-June at the end of the first study year by one of the partner universities. The first SECCLO Summer School in May 2019 was organized by NTNU on the topic of Blockchain Technologies.
Students will prepare for the summer school by forming groups and reading provided material that consists of research literature. During the summer school, the students will start a group project which they will complete after the summer school. All SECCLO students are required to participate in the summer school.
The learning goals of the summer school depend on the annual topic. Every year, there are also the following goals:
The first summer school was organized in Trondheim, Norway, in the premises of Norwegian University of Science and Technology. The summer school focused in Blockchain Technologies.
Organizing university: NTNU – Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Department of Information Security and Communication Technology, Trondheim
Responsible professor: Professor Danilo Gligoroski
This course will provide conceptual understanding of Blockchain as a public distributed database (distributed ledger) that records its immutable transactions through transparent consensus using secure cryptographic techniques. Blockchain is considered as a disruptive technology due to its impact on our modern digital society, especially in the areas of currencies and financial services, banking, contracting, governmentally regulated legal relations, identity management and anonymity and many others. This course will cover in details the blockchain operations and functionality. It will also cover current innovative directions in Blockchain technologies, opportunities and challenges.
After completion of this course, students will have the following:
Knowledge:
Skills:
Lectures, invited lectures and laboratory exercises. An individual practical involvement of every course participant is mandatory. Approximately one month before the start of the summer course, every participant will become an early adopter of a new virtual crypto currency especially developed for the course. During the one week of the summer course there will be online quizzes to support the theoretical and practical aspects. Every participant will receive homework tasks, that will be delivered one week after the summer course. The amount of mined coins, transactions and the overall wealth at the end of the course will influence the final grade.
Basic Cryptography and Information Security. It would be very useful for participants if they have a basic knowledge of computer networks, use of Unix-like operating systems, programming languages such as C, Python, and familiarity with basic web technologies such as Javascript, PHP and SQL.
Recommended textbook: “Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency Technologies: A Comprehensive Introduction”, by Arvind Narayanan, Joseph Bonneau, Edward Felten, Andrew Miller, Steven Goldfeder, July 2016.
Online material will be provided for all participants.
