CPSC 536D: Introduction to Cryptography (2025W1)

Instructor: Daochen Wang: wdaochen@cs.ubc.ca
Term: 2025 Winter Term 1 (September 2nd 2025 to December 5th 2025)
Logistics: Monday and Wednesday, 3:30pm - 5:00pm, ORCH Room 3002 (Floor 3)
Assessment: 2 homework assignments and 1 research paper presentation

Schedule

DateTopicSupplements
WedSept 3rdintro to cryptography

Overview

This is a graduate-level introductory course to cryptography. The first half will be lectures on foundational topics and the second half will be student- or instructor-led presentations of research papers. The first half will focus on symmetric and asymmetric cryptography, which concerns the secret sharing of information.

The main references will be Introduction to Modern Cryptography by Katz and Lindell (KL), and An Introduction to Mathematical Cryptography by Hoffstein, Pipher, and Silverman (HPS).

Tentative list of topics:

Prerequisites

As an introductory course, prior knowledge of cryptography is not a prerequisite. The main prerequisites are mathematical maturity and some prior knowledge of probability from, say, MATH 302.



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