MATH 396: Introduction to Cryptography

Course Description

This course discusses ways of encrypting information, a function which is vital to economics, defense and the empowerment of society. It is more crucial now than ever before to be able to securely transfer information in this age of electronic communication. After discussing primitive ways of encrypting information and explaining the need for more sophisticated encoding methods, this course explores the mathematics (number theory, finite fields and probability) behind both historic and more recent cryptosystems that have been developed for the secure transmission of data along non secure channels. This course continues with symmetric and public key cryptosystems, elliptic curves, digital signatures, zero knowledge protocols and other more advanced methods. This course does not assume any prior knowledge of number theory or probability. A minimum grade of C- is required in the prerequisite. (W).