CS 668A Foundations of Cryptography

CS/CpE 668A Foundations of Cryptography

Prof. Rebecca Wright
Pierce 120
Thursdays 6:15-8:45pm
Fall 2003

[Note: This class was previously called CyberSecurity Techniques and Mechanisms, and has also been listed by CpE as Computer & Telecomm Security. Foundations of Cryptography is a more accurate name than either of these.]

Course description

This course provides a broad introduction to cornerstones of security (authenticity, confidentiality, message integrity, and non-repudiation) and the mechanisms to achieve them, as well as the underlying mathematical basics. Topics include: block and stream ciphers, public-key systems, key management, certificates, public-key infrastructure (PKI), digital signatures, non-repudiation, and message authentication. Various security standards and protocols such as DES, AES, PGP, and Kerberos, are studied.

Prerequisites: MA 502 (Mathematical Foundations of Computer Science) and CS 590 (Introduction to Data Structures and Algorithms), or permission of the instructor.

Textbooks

Douglas Stinson, Cryptography: Theory and Practice , second edition, CRC Press. (Required). A list of errata is also available on-line.

Alfred Menezes, Paul van Oorschot, and Scott Vanstone, Handbook of Applied Cryptography , CRC Press. (Optional). I think you will find this a useful supplement to the main text. It is accessible on the web, at http://www.cacr.math.uwaterloo.ca/hac/ .

You can also find useful background on computational aspects of number theory and algebra on-line, in A Computational Introduction to Number Theory and Algebra by Victor Shoup.

Syllabus

The syllabus for this course: ps | pdf .

Teaching Assisant

Georgi Babayan, gbabaya1(at)stevens-tech.edu .

Office Hours

Georgi Babayan's office hours are Tuesdays, 4-6pm, and Thursdays, 4:30-6pm, in the Burchard computing lab.
Prof. Wright's office hours are Tuesdays 2-4pm in Lieb 216.