MATH M209A
Cryptography
Description: (Same as Computer Science M282A.) Lecture, four hours; outside study, eight hours. Introduction to theory of cryptography, stressing rigorous definitions and proofs of security. Topics include notions of hardness, one-way functions, hard-core bits, pseudorandom generators, pseudorandom functions and pseudorandom permutations, semantic security, public-key and private-key encryption, secret-sharing, message authentication, digital signatures, interactive proofs, zero-knowledge proofs, collision-resistant hash functions, commitment protocols, key-agreement, contract signing, and two-party secure computation with static security. Letter grading.
Units: 4.0
Units: 4.0
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Most Helpful Review
Winter 2024 - The lectures were very disorganized with no slides, posted notes, or recording. The professor would write down fragments of thoughts on the board; throughout the lecture, students would often end up asking clarifying questions which would force him to spend a huge amount of lecture time just repeating himself, which means it was really hard for people who did understand things he said the first time to not get distracted (and subsequently lost once he does move on to a new topic). The syllabus originally said we'd have a midterm and a final; we ended up having a take-home midterm and a final, with the midterm score being ignored if we do better on the final. There was never any practice problems or homework, so we went into both exams completely unaware of what level of understanding we would be asked to demonstrate. (Since the midterm was take-home, it wasn't an accurate representation of the difficulty of the final.) The professor himself clearly underestimated how hard the final would be, since he seemed surprised that nobody finished early. I spent the couple of weeks after the final terrified that I wouldn't make the curve, since I genuinely had no idea how well I'd done compared to other people. The professor also promised the exam would have some multiple choice or definition questions, which was misleading: there was no multiple choice at all and only one or two definitions which were just a small part of much more involved questions.
Winter 2024 - The lectures were very disorganized with no slides, posted notes, or recording. The professor would write down fragments of thoughts on the board; throughout the lecture, students would often end up asking clarifying questions which would force him to spend a huge amount of lecture time just repeating himself, which means it was really hard for people who did understand things he said the first time to not get distracted (and subsequently lost once he does move on to a new topic). The syllabus originally said we'd have a midterm and a final; we ended up having a take-home midterm and a final, with the midterm score being ignored if we do better on the final. There was never any practice problems or homework, so we went into both exams completely unaware of what level of understanding we would be asked to demonstrate. (Since the midterm was take-home, it wasn't an accurate representation of the difficulty of the final.) The professor himself clearly underestimated how hard the final would be, since he seemed surprised that nobody finished early. I spent the couple of weeks after the final terrified that I wouldn't make the curve, since I genuinely had no idea how well I'd done compared to other people. The professor also promised the exam would have some multiple choice or definition questions, which was misleading: there was no multiple choice at all and only one or two definitions which were just a small part of much more involved questions.
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