Tentative Syllabus

Part 1:  An Overview of Cryptographic Foundations

1/20  Introduction, overview of the course, policies, etc

1/22  Basic ideas of cryptography: 
encryption (hiding information) and authentication (verifying information);

1/27  Public key crypto; modular arithmetic

1/29  Some simple encryption and authentication algorithms

2/3  Introduction to groups

2/5  More basics of modular arithmetic

2/10 Digital signatures, RSA and DSS, hash functions, a note 
on quantum computation and communication

2/12 DES and other symmetric algorithms

Part 2:  Protocols, Models, and Practical Considerations

2/17 Key management:  Certification 
PGP, X.509, SDSI, Merkle trees, and other techniques

2/19  Key management: Other approaches
Kerberos; Ellison's paper

2/24  Network Security 1.  IPSEC, SSL, etc

2/26 Network Security 2 

3/3  Operating system  vulnerabilities and their effects on 
distributed system security

3/5  Threshold and Proactive Cryptography 1:  Shamir's protocol,
Blakley's protocol, a simple RSA key sharing approach

3/10  Threshold and Proactive Cryptography 2:  More complete 
(and complicated) techniques

3/12  Key escrow - Clipper and other ideas

spring break

3/24  Guest lecture

3/26 User Identification: one-time passwords, challenge response

3/31 User Identification: Biometrics, Smart Cards and PCMCIA cards 

4/2  Electronic Commerce 1:  the Model: "what do we want from 
electronic payments?"

4/7  Electronic Commerce 2:  SET, Electronic Cash 

4/9  Electronic Voting

4/14 Java

4/16 Firewalls

4/21 Cryptographic Application Programming Interfaces

4/23 Project Presentations

4/28 Project Presentations

4/30 Project Presentations

5/5 Project Presentations

5/7  Guest lecture

Instruction begins, January 21
Late registration closes, January 25
Last day to add courses or to change sections;
end of second week, February 1
Last day to change grading options
 end of fourth week, February 15
Last day to drop a course without a grade; end of sixth week, March 1 
Midsemester (eighth week), March 15 
Last day to withdraw from a course without approval of college dean;
end of twelfth week, April 12 
Withdrawal Deadline;
Last day to withdraw from a course with approval of college dean, May 9 
Last day of instruction, May 10 
Finals week, May 10-17 
Last day for report of removal of Incomplete grade, May 16 
Semester ends, May 17 
Commencement (subject to change), May 17