Course information
First lecture: Wednesday 11:15-14:00, August 28, in Smalltalk, Ole Johan Dahls hus.
All other lectures: Wednesdays 12:15-14:00. (Note: only the first lecture is 3 hours).
Recitation hours: Wednesdays 11:15-12:00 (i.e., before the normal lectures). During recitation I might go through this week's problem set, the solutions of the previous week's problem set, or any other question you might have.
Grading: Final exam counts for 100% of the grade. However, in order to be eligible to take the exam, you have to pass the midterm assignment (mandatory).
Course literature: the main source will be the freely available lecture notes Introduction to Modern Cryptography [BR], by Mihir Bellare and Phil Rogaway. There are also many other excellent resources for learning cryptography available, and I encourage you to use whatever source you are happy with. Here are some suggestions.
- Introduction to Modern Cryptography (3rd edition) (link), by Jon Katz and Yehuda Lindell. This book is quite similar to [BR], but is more up-to-date and complete. This is an excellent book and highly recommended if you want to invest in a physical book.
- Understanding Cryptography [PP], by Christof Parr and Jan Pelz. This was the book used in previous years of this course. Covers much of the same material as [BR], although with a more nuts-and-bolts emphasis.
- The Joy of Cryptograpy (link), by Mike Rosulek. This beautifully typeset book is a joy to read, and is also freely available as an electronic version. The approach taken in this book is pretty close to what you can expect in this course too.
- Serious Cryptography (link), by Jean-Phillipe Aumasson. This book is more application-oriented and covers more implementation aspects of cryptography.
- A Graduate Course in Applied Cryptography (link), by Dan Boneh and Victor Shoup. This still-unfinished book is already massive and covers a lot of material. Don't let the "Applied" in the title fool you into believing that this book is light on mathematical details and rigor! It takes the same definitional approach as we do in the course, but since it's a graduate textbook it is also more advanced. Freely available online.
Throughout the semester, I will also link to various other sources, such as research papers, blog posts, and web articles. I also recommend to check out the QA site crypto.stackexchange.com which has a lot of interesting and useful information.