EE627 Introduction to Cryptography and Secure Communication

Are you worried about who is in your computer? A recent article in US News and World Report indicated that the development of encryption to protect privacy was the "last major barrier that needs to be addressed in the use of the Internet as a complete communications medium for society."

This course will discuss ways to keep data secret and secure from unauthorized users.

 

Course Information - Fall 2006

Instructor: Professor Edward J. Delp
Office: Room 368 MSEE
Telephone: 49-41740
Office Hours: MWF 12:30 - 1:15pm and by appointment

Credit: 3 hours

Prerequisite: EE600 or permission of the instructor

Description: This course introduces the basic concepts of cryptography and secure communications.

Various cipher systems will be presented including transposition and substitution systems, rotor machines, and polyalphabetic systems. Block ciphers will also be discussed with emphasis on the Data Encryption Standard (DES) and the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES).

The RSA and Knapsack ciphers will be presented as examples of public key systems. The analysis of linear and non-linear shift registers for the use as key generators in stream ciphers will also be presented. Methods used to attack ciphers will be discussed with emphasis on complexity.

Watermarking and Steganography will also be described with emphasis how how these techniques are used in conjunction with encryption systems to protect multimedia data.

Various case studies of the use of cryptographic systems in communications systems will be presented including a discussion of some of the issues involved with privacy.

Text:

Douglas R. Stinson, Cryptography: Theory and Practice, CRC Press

References:

B. Schneier, Applied Cryptography, Wiley, 1996

H.C.A. van Tilborg, An Introduction to Cryptography, Kluwer, 1988

A.G. Konheim, Cryptography: A Primer, Wiley, 1981

W. Patterson, Mathematical Cryptology, Rownan and Littlefield, 1987

Course Projects

To be announced later.
Project1

Project2

Project3

Final Project

 

Course Outline

  1. Historical Overview of Cryptography

  2. Privacy

  3. Mathematical Overview

  4. What did Shannon say about cryptography?

  5. Transposition and Substitution Ciphers

  6. Rotor Machine and Polyalphabetic Ciphers

  7. Block Ciphers: DES

  8. Can DES be attacked?

  9. Block Ciphers: AES

  10. Public Key Systems

  11. Knapsack System

  12. The Knapsack System Bites the Dust!

  13. RSA System

  14. Key Management

  15. Digital Signatures and Authentication

  16. Stream Ciphers

  17. Linear Shift Registers

  18. Non-Linear Shift Registers

  19. Watermarking and Steganography

  20. Applications

 

Class Information

There will be one mid-term and no final exam. A course project will substitute for the final exam. The test date will be announced later.

Homework will be assigned periodically.

This course will place emphasis on papers that have appeared in the literature. The main goal of this course is to have fun and discuss issues relative to information security. The social, economic, and political implications of these issues will also be discussed.

 

More information about the class is available here.

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This page was created on August 15, 1997 and last updated on August 16, 2006 at 3:06PM EDT.
Professor Edward J. Delp