ITC8240 Cryptography (2021)

Course information

Code: ITC8240 Cryptography

ECTS: 6

Assessment: examination

Instructors:

• Ahto Buldas ahto dot buldas at taltech dot ee
• Nikita Snetkov nikita dot snetkov at taltech dot ee

Topics

1. Introduction to the course
2. Simple (classical) ciphers: substitution, permutation, shift, affine, Vigenere
3. Attacks against classical ciphers: attack types, basic attacks, attacks against Vigenere
4. Theory of unbreakable ciphers I: basic conceptes of information theory
5. Theory of unbreakable ciphers II: proof that one-time pad is unbreakable, attacks against imperfect ciprers, unicity distance
6. Block ciphers: basic architectures, execution modes, etc.
7. Key establishment: definition, proof that no key establishment protocol is secure against unlimited adversaries, DH key exchange idea
8. Limited adversaries I: complexity theoretic approach to adversaries, complexity classes P and NP
9. Limited adversaries II: randomized computations, related complexity classes, Chernoff bounds, etc.
10. RSA cryptosystem: definition and related mathematical concepts
11. RSA implementation failures: some examples how RSA should not be implemented
12. Some other public key cryptosystems: ElGamal and related, EC cryptosystems, Paillier?
13. Digital signature schemes and hash functions: security notions, paddings, hash function basics
14. Cryptographic protocols: authentication, zero knowledge, etc.
15. Quantum adversaries: concept, some results without proofs (Shor, Grover) and their security implications. Post-quantum cryptosystems (overview)

E-learning process and grading criteria

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