Projects in Cryptography, Codes, and Information Security  

SM473, Projects in Cryptography, Codes, and Information Security: A capstone course on cryptography

• policy statement.
• tentative syllabus.
• local Sage server (ask in class for URL, and please use your email login also as the Sage login).
• Sage server at the University of Washington.
• Some of the capstone papers (posted by permission): John Nash's letters to NSA
• lecture notes (with Sage and Sympy examples) and Sage code

Recommended text: A. McAndrew, "Introduction to Cryptography with open-source software", CRC Press, 2011

Working Groups: The class is divided into two-member working groups. Each group will work on the homework together. Also, there will be class group activities such as groups solving each other's ciphers.

Quizzes: There are several quizzes (open notes, but are taken individually not in groups).

There will be hour exams and a final project. The final project is an individual project. Examples from spring 2012-2013:

• Midn Clark: Stegonagraphy capstone, slides
• Midn Poole: SIGABA capstone, slides

Software: Using Sage (as in the textbook) will make the homework a lot easier and our cryptology calculations less trivial and more interesting. http://www.sagemath.org/

Topics the course should cover:

1. Classical ciphers (Vigenere Cipher, Hill Cipher ...)
2. Information theory concepts (Perfect Secrecy, Entropy ...)
3. Number Theory basics Public Key cryptosystems (RSA, Rabin, ...)
4. Modern Symmetric Ciphers
5. Discrete Logarithm Problem and related ciphers (ElGamal, Diffie-Hellman ...)
6. Stream Ciphers
7. Error Correcting Codes and Stegonagraphy
8. Digital Signatures

References:

• Interesting papers in Frode Weierud's cryptocellar
• W. Stein and others, Sage - a mathematical software system,
  http://www.sagemath.org/
• T. Brock, Linear Feedback Shift Registers and Cyclic Codes in Sage, Rose-Hulman Undergraduate Mathematics Journal, vol. 7, 2006. http://www.rose-hulman.edu/mathjournal/v7n2.php, or
  brock
• M. Hogan, The Blum-Goldwasser cryptosystem, hogan
• K. Tucker-Davis, An analysis of the F5 steganographic system, tucker-davis
• O. Pell's well-written mathematics essay on Cryptology,
• NY Times article on GCHQ's online crypto puzzle,
• Cryptography videos:
  • Peter Rowlett lecture: Substitution ciphers: Ancient - Renaissance (recorded 2009)
  • Diffie Hellman talk: Information Security—Before & After Public-Key Cryptography (recorded 2005)
  • Short documentary, mostly on WWII ciphers: The Innovation of Cryptology: An Enigma of History (recorded date unknown)
  • Steve Weis (on Google's Applied Security team) talk Theory and Practice of Cryptography (recorded 2007)
  • Prof Ronald Rivest talk The Growth of Cryptography (recorded 2011)