About CPSC 429, Winter 2008

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 Course Objectives

The main objective of this course is to provide students with a thorough understanding of the fundamentals of and current best practices in applied cryptography. Students will have a solid understanding, including practical experience, of the basic cryptographic primitives and most important real-world cryptographic systems in use.

 Required Knowledge and Skills
 Body of Knowledge
 Development and Enhancement of Skills

The coverage of additional cryptographic primitives will round out the students' existing knowledge (from PMAT 329) of the basic cryptographic tools available to provide security services. The discussion of real-world protocols will give students numerous examples of how these primitives can be assembled to create robust security solutions for a variety of applications, from the very general (IP security) to the very specific (eCommerce security). The hands-on experience students will obtain via programming assignments will provide insight into practical issues related to efficient implementation and real world security.

 Languages and Tools

All the programming work required for this course will be done using C++ or Java. The openssl cryptography library implementations of some cryptographic primitives will also be used. No other tools will be required.

 Learning Methods

This course is predominantly lecture-based. Students' skills will be developed through three methods:

 Beyond this Course

This course is part of a concentration on information security. Students who want to learn more about applied security may consider the follow-up course in that concentration, CPSC 529 (Information and Network Security). This course discusses security controls and mechanisms in a much broader sense, in which applied cryptography is one important component.

Students who want to learn more about cryptography may consider CPSC 519 (Introduction to Quantum Computing), in which quantum cryptography is discussed, or the undergraduate concentration in cryptography offered by the Mathematics department, in which the more theoretical aspects of cryptography are covered in greater depth.


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