Introduction to Cryptography

Catalog description

Cryptography provides important tools for ensuring the privacy, authenticity, and integrity of the increasingly sensitive information involved in modern digital systems. Nowadays, core cryptographic tools, including encryption, message authentication codes, digital signature, key agreement protocols, etc., are used behind millions of daily online transactions. In this course, we will unveil some of the "magic" of cryptography in this course. Modern Cryptography uses mathematical language to precisely pin down elusive security goals, design primitives and protocols to achieve these goals, and validate the security of designed primitives and protocols using mathematical proofs based on clearly stated hardness assumptions. Therefore, to learn cryptography, it is essential to understand its mathematical underpinning. In this class, we will see the inner working of cryptography for several core cryptographic tools, from encryption, to message authentication codes, to hash functions, to digital signatures, etc.