MA 479 / CSSE 490: Cryptography
Syllabus

Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology
A joint effort of the
Department of Mathematics
and the Department of Computer Science & Software Engineering
Spring term, 2002-2003

Catalog Course Description

Introduction to basic ideas of modern cryptography with emphasis on mathematical background and practical implementation. Topics include: Touches upon some of the societal issues of cryptography. Crosslisted as MA 479 and CSSE 479.
Here is another description of this course:
Alice and Bob are connected by a public communication channel. Any message transmitted over this channel might be altered arbitrarily (by some attacker). One central question of this course is: How can Alice send a message M to Bob in such a way that:
  1. No one except Bob can see M, and
  2. In the end, Bob knows that what he received is what Alice intended to send.
This seminar investigates both methods for addressing the above question and attacks on such methods. The methods to be discussed include classical approaches (like Caesar's cipher), block-cipher systems (like DES) and public-key cryptosystems (like RSA).

In addition, this seminar will:

Prerequisites

Instructors

Texts

There will be regular readings from each of these required textbooks.

Course Schedule

Assignments

Late work

Late work will generally be accepted, but only for half (50%) credit.

Grading

There are no exams.
Paper-and-pencil exercises,
perhaps with assistance from Maple
60%
(Perhaps 30% each
but don't hold us to that)
Small programming projects
Oral report on a research article  20%
Research proposal  10%
Discussions of the readings
from Crypto
10%

Collaboration and Academic Integrity

Collaboration is encouraged, and sometimes required, on paper-and-pencil problems and most programming projects. When you collaborate, you must properly credit your collaborators and clearly indicate the extent of the collaboration. Failure to properly acknowledge collaboration can be considered cheating. See the departmental statement on academic honesty. Dishonesty on homeworks, programming projects or exams may result in a lowered course grade or a grade of an F in the course. More important, such dishonesty steals your own self-esteem. So don't cheat.

Newsgroup

There is a newsgroup for this course:rhit.cs.crypto. This is the forum for continuing discussions begun in class, asking general questions (of interest to the entire class) about homework and assignments, and other announcements of general interest. You are responsible for information posted to the newsgroup. Assistants and instructors will read the newsgroup.

Suggestion Box

We want your feedback on how the course is going and how it could be improved. We appreciate suggestions that are made in person. However, we'd like to know what you are thinking, even if you do not feel comfortable with letting us know who made the suggestion. The course web page contains a link to an anonymous Suggestion Box. It sends us an email with no way for us to trace the sender. All we ask is that you will use it for serious suggestions, not just to vent when you are momentarily frustrated. Take a deep breath, count to 10, and if you still have something to say, by all means say it. You can also use it to tell us about things you like in the course and don't want to change. :)