| Contents | Announcements | Exams | Literature | Videos and slides | Course notes and exercise sheets | Old exams |
Tanja Lange
Coding Theory and
Cryptology
Eindhoven Institute for the Protection
of Systems and Information
Department of Mathematics and Computer Science
Room MF 5.062
Technische Universiteit Eindhoven
P.O. Box 513
5600 MB Eindhoven
Netherlands
Phone: +31 (0) 40 247 4764
The easiest ways to reach me wherever I am:
e-mail:tanja@hyperelliptic.org
This page belongs to course 2MBD60 - Introduction to cryptology. This course is offered at TU/e as part of the bachelor's elective package Security and used to be called 2WF80 - Introduction to Cryptology.
Contents
Classical systems (Caesar cipher, Vigenère, Playfair, rotor machines), shift register sequences, DES, RC4, RSA, Diffie-Hellman key exchange, cryptanalysis by using statistics, factorization, attacks on WEP (aircrack).
Some words up front: Crypto is an exciting area of research. Learning
crypto makes you more aware of the limitations of security and privacy
which might make you feel less secure but that's just a more
accurate impression of reality and it a good step to improve your
security.
Here is a nice, though somewhat dated, link collection
of software to help you stay secure
https://prism-break.org/en/
and private
https://www.privacytools.io/.
If you study mathematics, you should have participated in "2MBD20 - Algebraic
Structures"
and "2MBD30 - Applied Number Theory and Algebra".
If you study computer science or any other program you should have
participated in "2DBI00 - Linear Algebra and Applications",
"2IT50 or 2IT80 - Discrete structures", and
"2WF90 - Algebra
for security" before taking this course.
If not you can find some material in the Literature section
but note that you are on your own for learning this.
Lectures take place Mon block 3 and 4
and Thu block 7 and 8.
We have three locations for the instruction sessions (Thu block 5 and 6),
please join the room that's emptier. We might reduce to two rooms if not enough
students show up, but I really recommend doing the instruction sessions and
attending them live if you can fit them in your agenda. They are more important
than the lecture, and thus get the prime spot. We'll have enough instructors in
the rooms so that you can ask your questions and check the answers to your
exercises with them. We will not hand out solutions.
In 2020 and 2021 the course has been
running online with short videos – one video per topic,
so several videos per unit.
This year lectures happen only in person.
It is not necessary to purchase a book to follow the course.
For some background on algebra see
For easy prototyping of crypto implementations I like the computer
algebra system Sage. It is based on
python and you can use it online or install it on your computer (in a
virtual box in case you're running windows).
I recorded a
video to
demonstrate how to use Sage https://www.sagemath.org/, covering basics of finite fields and
elliptic curves. The latter do not for this course, so watch start till
minute 10:50 and then again for about 2 minutes after 19:30.
I also wrote a short ``cheat sheet'' with commands for Sage,
see here
For encrypting your homeworks you should use GPG/PGP. If you're
running Linux then GNU uPG is easy to install.
GPG4win; if
you're using MAC-OS you can use GPG
Suite (though I'm getting reports that they changed their system and now
charge for the full version, the command-line linux version works for sure).
Thunderbird has good integration and I hear that also outlook can
work well with the plugins.
Please always inlcude all TAs when you send in your homeworks -- and make
sure that you encrypt to all of them and to your team mates. All email
systems that I know of will do this automatically if you have all keys in your
address book and the people in the To or Cc field your email.
The teaching assistants from 2023 wrote
this
guide to homework submission for this course.
If absolutely not possible otherwise, we are OK with having only the attachment being
encrypted and signed, but prefer proper encryption of the whole email. If you
end up going for file encryption only you must ensure that all receipients can
decrypt and you're missing out on the support that the email system offers you.
30% of the grade is determined by homeworks. There will be six
sets of homework during the quarter. You should hand in your homework
in groups of 3 or 4. To make sure that you get used to crypto we require
solutions to be sent encrypted and signed with GPG/PGP. Each participant must
have communicated with the TAs at least once using GPG/PGP.
You will find the keys for the TAs linked above.
If for some reason you need to email me,
you can find my public key for tanja@hyperelliptic.org on the key servers
and on my
homepage.
The exam will take place on 25 January 2027, 13:30 - 16:30,
please double check on the offical
TU/e pages before going to the exam.
The retake is likely scheduled for April 7
The exam
accounts for the remaining 70% of the grade.
For 2022 and 2023 the lectures were recorded
and posted at
TU/e's
Yuja site. Search for course code 2WF80 (the old name of this course) to
see the recordings. Mine are the 2022/23 and 2023/24 versions, not the 2018/19
version which for some reason laods with preview. Click on the three vertical
dots on the right end of the course to select "open" and get to the videos.
For the 2020 and 2021 editions of the course I recorded a lot of short videos
which you can find on the YouTube
Channel which are better for self study or if you want a more direct way to
look up a subject.
The
course page for 2021 has short descriptions of all videos, slides,
and no-cookie links to the YouTube videos. Watch them
from there if you're on a low-cookie diet.
This section is extended through the course with notes of what happened in class and links to blackboard pictures. You can also find here the exercise sheets for the sessions on Thursdays.
09 Nov 2026
The frist lecture.
This course was given for the first time in Q2 of 2014. Here are my exams so far
