Applied Cryptography

AY2025/2026 Semester 1

Summary: Cryptography is the foundational building block of Cybersecurity and Privacy. While the field of classical cryptography dealt with security and privacy of data in transit, the modern take on the subject has generalized the scope of its applications to ensuring security and privacy of all forms of digital communication, computation, automation, interaction, transaction and preservation. Thus, it is important to understand the technical aspects of cryptography to appreciate its applications in cybersecurity. The Aim: This cryptography course in Computer Science and Engineering aims to develop your ability to understand how cryptographic algorithms work, to identify the problems associated with the application of cryptography in real-world scenarios, and explain the operation of various cryptographic mechanisms. This course will equip you to know deeply the fundamentals of symmetric key ciphers, hash functions and public key ciphers, enabling you to understand and develop secure cryptography solutions in real life cryptography. It will also introduce you to popular cryptographic libraries and APIs for hands-on implementation of security mechanisms, and some prominent cryptographic standards, guidelines and frameworks from the industry and government bodies.