Privacy Enhancing Technologies
Fall 2026
Instructor: Prof. Florian Tramèr
Contact: florian.tramer@inf.ethz.ch
Lectures: Monday 10:15-12:00 (CAB G 11) – Tuesday 13:15-14:00 (ML H 44)
Exercise Sessions: Tuesday 17:15-18:00, CAB G 51
Course catalog
Description
Privacy is a fundamental human right! And yet, technological advances (in particular in computer science) can often undermine privacy. In this class we will see how to formalize various notions of privacy and how to build systems that preserve privacy, by combining techniques from cryptography and statistics. The later parts of the course will focus on applications to machine learning.
Schedule
| Topic | Dates | Optional Readings |
|---|---|---|
Intro + FHE (1h)Lecture Notes, Class Notes | Sep 15 |
|
Commitment schemes + PRFs (3h)Lecture Notes | Sep 21-22 |
|
Zero Knowledge (4h)Lecture Notes | Sep 28-Oct 5 |
|
SNARKs (4h) | Oct 5-12 |
|
Private Information Retrieval (2h) | Oct 13-19 |
|
Oblivious RAM (2h) | Oct 19-20 |
|
Secure multiparty computation (3h) | Oct 26-27 |
|
IN-CLASS GRADED ASSESSMENT (2h) | Nov 2 (TBD) | |
Data anonymization (3h) | Nov 3-9 |
|
Differential Privacy (3h) | Nov 10-16 |
|
Approximate DP (3h) | Nov 17-23 |
|
Private learning (2h) | Nov 24-30 |
|
Membership Inference Attacks (4h) | Nov 30-Dec 7 |
|
Crypto + DP (1h) | Dec 8 |
|
FINAL (2h) | Dec 14 | |
No class (happy holidays!) | Dec 15 |
Homeworks
| Date | Homework |
|---|---|
| Sep 15 | (no homework) |
| Sep 22 | HW1: Commitments, PRFs |
| Oct 29 | HW2: Zero Knowledge |
Feedback
This is the third time we teach this class, so we would love to get feedback on how to improve it! You can use this form to give us anonymous feedback throughout the semester. You can fill it out as often as you want. And we make mistakes! If something looks wrong or impossible, please let us know.
Course Staff
- Michael Aerni (Head TA)
- Lukas Fluri
- Nina Richter
- Elias Myers
- Avital Shafran
- Carol Long
- Lennart Finke
- Pura Peetathawatchai
- Sophie Ostmeier