Applied Cryptography Syllabus ENCS4320
Applied Cryptography Syllabus ENCS4320
The course integrates modern engineering tools and skills by addressing engineering principles through the application of cryptographic algorithms, network security analysis, and protocol design. These approaches align with the outcomes that require using modern engineering tools necessary for practical engineering practice .
Knowledge of primes, factoring, and RSA equips students with the ability to understand and solve complex engineering problems that involve encryption and decryption processes. This understanding supports secure communication and data protection protocols taught in the course .
The course emphasizes understanding network security threats, such as eavesdropping and data tampering, and cryptographic countermeasures like encryption, digital signatures, and message authentication codes. These countermeasures are designed to ensure confidentiality, integrity, and authenticity of data .
Understanding CPA security and PRFs is vital for students to comprehend how cryptographic systems maintain security against adaptive chosen-plaintext attacks. These concepts are critical for analyzing the security properties of encryption schemes taught in the course .
Digital signatures play a crucial role in achieving authenticity and non-repudiation in cryptographic protocols. The course teaches the principles of digital signature algorithms and their integration into security systems to verify the sender's identity and protect data integrity .
The course structure includes topics on number theory, asymmetric ciphers, and public key infrastructure, which are fundamental to secure key management. This comprehensive approach enables students to understand key management challenges and implement secure key distribution and exchange protocols .
By the end of the course, students are expected to understand and apply cryptographic hash functions, including constructing secure hash algorithms (such as HMACs) and analyzing their role in ensuring data integrity and authentication within security protocols .
The applied cryptography course offers insight into the latest cryptographic algorithms and protocols, which are essential for identifying and mitigating real-world network security challenges. Students learn to apply this knowledge to devise solutions that enhance the security of contemporary networking systems .
Computational security is crucial in cryptographic protocol design, as it quantifies the infeasibility of breaking a cryptographic scheme using polynomial-time resources. This course covers computational security concepts, such as CPA security and pseudorandom functions, to analyze the strength and limitations of cryptographic systems .
Understanding cryptographic systems in this course requires a foundation in number theory and finite fields, which underpin many cryptographic primitives and algorithms .