CSCI 360 Cryptography and Cryptanalysis

3 hours 

Cryptographic codes and ciphers play a key role in the protection of information and modern communications. This course examines the central topics in cryptography (the art of designing codes and ciphers) and cryptanalysis (the art of breaking codes and ciphers). Students first explore historical encryption schemes such as Caesar's cipher and substitution ciphers. They then investigate modern techniques including secret key schemes such as DES and AES and Public key methods such as RSA and Elliptic Curves. This course takes a hands-on approach to studying these techniques in that the student will write programs that make and break codes. The ethical and legal considerations that arise in code breaking are also discussed and illustrated through case studies.