Title:   Introduction to Cryptography

 

Course No: CS961

 

Units: 3-0-0-4

 

Pre-requisites: None

 

Instructor: Manindra Agrawal

 

Time and Space coordinates: electronic

 

Description:

 

Cryptography is the science and art of coding information so that only authorized people can read and understand it. In the modern digital world, it has become an essential tool for doing online transactions. This course will introduce fundamental concepts of cryptography and focus on development of basic primitives. These are:

1. Classical ciphers                     [2]
2. Private-key encryption           [4]
3. Public-key encryption            [6]
4. Hashing                                   [1]
5. Digital signatures and PKI      [2]
6. Protocols: e-cash (bitcoin), secret sharing, e-voting, group signatures, zero-knowledge, ... [5]

 

The course will be a mix of theory and practice. While theory will be discussed in the class, assignments will require one to put the concepts learned in the class to use.

 

References:

 

1. Bruce Schneier, Applied Cryptography, John Wiley and Sons, 1996.
2. Katz and Lindell, Introduction to Modern Cryptography, CRC Press, 2008.
3. Research papers.