Cryptography - Past, Present and Future
An overview of cryptography from the past, to the current methods, and the potential for the future
Description
This course is intended to provide an overview of cryptography. We will take a tour through history, looking at the earliest ciphers, through the secret-key methods that took over, through to current methods such as public-key methods, and also look at the future possibilities as the next step. The course consists of a series of short lectures on slides - many have supplementary notes and questions to attempt, with fully-worked solutions provided. The course is intended to be informative but also enjoyable - my aim is that you learn something about cryptography, but also enjoy it and are motivated to find out more!
What You Will Learn!
- Cryptography and its past, present applications, and the future
- History of cryptography including Caesar, Substitution, Vigenere, and Playfair ciphers, one-time pad and mechanical ciphers such as Enigma
- Current secret-key cryptography including DES and AES
- Public-key methods including RSA
- Hashing, digital signatures and digital certificates
- Public-key infrastructures (PKI)
- Linear Feedback Shift Registers
- Steganography and watermarking
- Basics of steganography, watermarking, and elliptic curve cryptography
- The idea behind cryptocurrency (e.g. Bitcoin)
- Future cryptography including quantum computing and quantum cryptography
Who Should Attend!
- Anyone interested in how cryptography works and its history, present and future
- Mathematics students