Syllabus

COMP 351 - Cryptography

Fall 2006

Instructor--	Danny Krizanc
Office--	631 Science Center
Office Hours--	Tuesdays 2:30-4:30 or by appointment
Phone--	860-685-2186
E-mail--	dkrizanc at wesleyan.edu
Webpage--	http://dkrizanc.web.wesleyan.edu/

Outline

Soon after the development of written communication came the need for secret writing, i.e., cryptography. With the advent of electronic communication came the need for network security. This course exams the many ways in which people have tried to hide information and secure communication in the past and how security is achieved in today's networks. The emphasis will be on the technical means of achieving secrecy. Some topics to be considered:

Classical symmetric key ciphers (Ceasar substitution to the Enigma machine)
Information theory with applications to cryptography
Modern symmetric key ciphers (DES, AES and variants)
Public-key cryptography (e.g., RSA)
Cryptographic protocols (e.g., key exchange, digital signatures)
Authentication and hashing

Related topics such as steganography, privacy, and quantum cryptography will be discussed depending on the interests of the participants.

Materials

There is no required textbook for the course. If you feel the need for a book I am recommending (and the bookstore should have a few copies of) Modern Cryptography: Theory and Practice by Wenbo Mao. It is up-to-date, relatively inexpensive, and covers basically everything I will likely mention in the course. I also recommend that you bookmark The Handbook of Applied Cryptography by Alfred Menezes, Paul van Oorschot, and Scott Vanstone. While slightly out-of-date, this is still the most comprehensive reference on this material and should be read by anyone really interested in cryptography. A copy of both of these books has been put on reserve at the library. Other books I would recommend include Cryptography and Network Security by William Stallings, Cryptography: Theory and Practice by Douglas Stinson, and Practical Cryptography by Niels Ferguson and Bruce Schneier. For an historical perspective, it's just not possible to beat The Codebreakers by David Kahn. A number of interesting tools for analyzing historical ciphers can be found on Simon Singh's Codebook CD-ROM. A zip file containing a lite version of the CD can be found here. Bruce Schneier is a prolific writer on cryptographic issues. I recommend signing up for his monthly newsletter Crypto-gram .

Requirements

There will be several assignments accounting for 50 per cent of the grade. The remainder of the grade is divided between a class presentation (20 per cent) and a final paper (30 per cent).

Report problems to dkrizanc at wesleyan.edu