Basic Information

  • Course Code: EE 793
  • Course Name: Topics in Cryptology
  • Course Offered In: 2023-2024
  • Semester Season: Spring
  • Instructors: Prof. Virendra Singh
  • Prerequisites: None
  • Difficulty (1 being easy and 5 being tough): 3

Course Content

  1. Historical Ciphers and Principles of Modern Cryptography
  2. Perfectly Secret Encryption -One-Time Pad -Shannon’s Theorem
  3. Private Key Cryptography -Stream ciphers and Block ciphers, LFSR -DES -AES
  4. Public Key Cryptography -Basic number theory and group theory -RSA -Diffie–Hellman and ElGamal encryptions -Elliptic Curve Cryptography -Digital Signatures

Post Midterm:- Post-Quantum Cryptography

  1. Lattice Based Cryptography -Closest Vector Problem (CVP) and Shortest Vector Problem (SVP) -Learning with Errors (LWE), Ring LWE
  2. Homomorphic encryption

Feedback on Lectures

The lecture style for this course was like the professor’s other courses, instead of using slides, the professor taught exclusively using the board, which encouraged active note-taking for bonus marks and engagement from students. One notable aspect was the way the professor simplified complex concepts. While the lectures were not heavily mathematical and did not include formal mathematical proofs, the professor’s explanations made difficult topics more understandable. This was particularly helpful for understanding concepts that might be challenging to grasp solely from the textbook. For the final exams(which are open book), lecture notes proved to be more helpful than the textbooks. However, for those who want a deeper and more detailed understanding of the concepts, the textbooks were necessary as they covered the rigorous mathematical details.

Feedback on Evaluations

There were weekly quizzes on the topics covered the previous week, to ensure continuous engagement with the material. Both the midterm and final exams were open book, allowing students to reference their lecture notes during the exams. Following the final exam, there was a course project to complete.

According to the introductory lecture, the evaluation breakdown was supposed to be as follows:

Mid Term Exam (15-20%):- Open Book/Notes Exam Final Exam (35-40%):- Open Book/Notes Exam, potentially in two phases Assignments (10-15%):- Periodic sets of assignments Course Projects (10%):- Group project (maximum size of 2) Continuous Evaluations (15-20%):- Weekly quizzes Presentation/Viva (5%) [BONUS] Research Project (15%) [BONUS] Class Notes (5%) Absolute grading

However, it did not seem that this structure was strictly followed, and the grading remained somewhat mysterious, consistent with the professor’s other courses. This lack of clarity in grading criteria and weight distribution can be challenging for students trying to gauge their performance and understand the assessment process.

Study Material and Resources

  1. Applied Cryptography – Dan Boneh and Victor Shoup, Ver 0.6
  2. Introduction to Modern Cryptography by Jonathan Katz and Yehuda Lindell, 2/e
  3. Cryptography and Data Security – Dorothy Denning, Addison Wesley, 1988
  4. Few research papers which were uploaded on Moodle

Among these, the pre-midterm portion was mainly based on Book 1. This book served as a key resource, aligning closely with the lecture content and offering clear explanations.

Follow-up Courses

EE465 : Cryptocurrency and Blockchain Technologies

Final Takeaway

This course is a great introduction to cryptology, covering both modern and post-quantum techniques without diving too deep into the math. The content is easy to understand, and there are plenty of resources available online to help you along the way. However, I highly recommend attending the lectures and taking good notes to do well in the exams.