MATH540

Cryptography is the field of mathematics that looks at methods to establish safe means of communication, especially in the situation where an adversary is attempting to discover or subvert that communication. How can we guarantee the security of the messages we send, so that only the intended recipients of the message are able to read them?
In this course we look at a variety of protocols that allow for provably secure communication. The student in this class will learn about public-key cryptography, block ciphers, elliptic curve
cryptography, Weil pairing, lattice-based encryption, and zero knowledge proofs. These methods constitute current practice in the field of cryptography. We will also consider the threat and challenges to secure encryption from quantum computers.