Cryptography I

The most important tool to protect information within computer systems is cryptography. This course will teach you the intricacies of cryptographic systems, and show you how to use them correctly in real-world situations. This course starts with an in-depth discussion about how two people with the same secret key can securely communicate with each other even if an adversary is watching and trying to disrupt traffic. Examining many protocols will be done. We'll also examine the flaws in current systems. Second half of course will be about public-key methods that allow two people to generate a secret key. Participants will have the opportunity to work with fun programming projects and be exposed to exciting problems. We will be covering advanced cryptographic tasks like zero-knowledge and privacy mechanisms in a second course, Crypto II.