| Instructor: | Ben Steinhurst | ||
| Email: | steinhurst at math dot cornell dot edu. (When you send an email message, please identify yourself at the end.) | ||
| Office hours: | T 2-4 | ||
| TA | Sanjay Dharmavaram Muralidharan |
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| Email: | sd282 at cornell dot edu | ||
| Office hours: | W 2-4 Malott 218 | ||
| Course info: |
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| Course description: | This course will take you from ancient ciphers and codes, to the early modern mathematical ciphers, to a brief interlude with the Enigma machine, to public key exchange codes, to a glace ahead at the near future of practical code making. We will focus on a quantitative perspective to each code especially when answering the most important question of all: how secure is it? | ||
| Course evaluation: | There will be regular written homework assignments collected and graded. These will be largly exercises in the mechanics of encryption and decryption. However some basic mathematical skills will also be included as necessary. There will also be one or two in-class prelims which will be more focused on interpretive questions. There will be a comprehensive final at a time scheduled by the Registrar at the end of the semester. |
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| Course documents: | |||
| Links: | |||
This list will mostly be updated after the fact as a reference for what we have discussed and to post homework assignments.
| Lecture | Date | Topics Discussed | See | HW Due |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 23 August | Course intro, historical crypto systems | Syllabus and Section 1.1 | |
| 2 | 28 August | 19th and 20th crypto systems and function notation | Sections 1.1 and 1.2 | |
| 3 | 30 August | Philosophy and ideas of cryptanalysis | Section 1.3 | HW1 corrected 28 August |
| 4 | 4 September | Shift ciphers and modular arithmatic | Section 2.1 | |
| 5 | 6 September | More modular arithmatic, decimation, and affine ciphers | Section 2.2 | HW2 |
| 6 | 11 September | Affine and substitution ciphers | Sections 2.2 and 2.3 | |
| 7 | 13 September | Transposition cipherd | Section 2.4 | HW3 |
| 8 | 18 September | Polyaphabetic substitution ciphers | Section 2.5 | |
| 9 | 20 September | Introduction to Probability | Section 2.6 | HW4 |
| 10 | 25 September | Exam review day | Sections 1.1-2.5 | Review Sheet |
| 27 September | Exam 1 | Good Luck! | ||
| 11 | 2 October | Probability and Index of Coincidence | Sections 2.6 and 2.7 | |
| 12 | 4 October | Index of Coincidence and Friedman Test | Section 2.7 | HW5 |
| 13 | 11 October | Cryptanalysis of Vigenere Cipher | Section 2.8 | HW6 |
| 14 | 16 October | More Cryptanalysis of the Vigenere Cipher | Section 2.8 | |
| 15 | 18 October | Number representations, Boolean Functions, and Numerical Functions | Sections 3.1 and 3.2 | HW7 |
| 16 | 23 October | Computational Complexity | Section 3.3 | |
| 17 | 25 October | Exam Review | HW8 Exam 2 Review Sheet | |
| 30 October | Exam 2! | |||
| 18 | 2 November | Stream and block ciphers | Sections 3.4 and 3.5 | |
| 19 | 6 November | Block ciphers and factoring | Sections 3.5 and 4.1 | |
| 20 | 8 November | Factoring and Euclidean algorithm | Section 4.1, and a different explanation of the Euclidean algorithm here. | |
| 21 | 13 November | Fermat's Little Theorem | Section 4.3 | |
| 22 | 15 November | RSA | Section 4.4 | HW9 |
| 23 | 20 November | Security of RSA and digital signatures | Sections 4.4 and 4.6 | |
| 24 | 27 November | Quantum Key Distribution | ||
| 25 | 29 November | Semester Overview | HW10 | |
| 11 December | Final exam 7pm-9:30pm Malott 253 | Final Review Sheet |
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Lasted Updated: 4 December 2012.