Fact Sheet
CSC290: Cryptology

Also, Simon Singh's The Code Book, published by Random House, Anchor Books, 1999.

Other good books: you can't have too many good crypto books. Classics full of great stuff are:

Technical: Applied Cryptography by Bruce Schneier (John Wiley and Sons, 1996). A useful, in-depth reference for modern cryptography.

Techno-Historical: Codebreakers: The Story of Secret Writing by David Kahn (Scribner, 1996). THE classic, massive tome (1188 pages), if you want more history than Singh provides. This work has inspired all generations of cryptologists, including Diffie.

Texts and Mathematical: Making, Breaking Codes by Paul Garrett. The course text for the last five years. Nice interleaving of crypto techniques and required mathematics, but not as computer-aware and some chapters frustratingly brief, not as many topics as Trappe-Washington. Cryptography, Theory and Practice by D.R. Stinson. Quite a popular grad and advanced undergrad text. A UR undergrad math major liked it better than Garrett.

Fictional: Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson. Nazi gold meets young, security-conscious entrepreneurs. Cool stuff! Have His Carcase by Dorothy Sayers. As in many detective novels, crypto is peripheral in this but Lord Peter solves a Playfair cipher in it. Da Vinci Code by Don Brown: don't waste your time. If it's a shitty book you want, hold out for Brown's truly scaly exercise in terrible writing and worse science -- Digital Fortress. Obviously done early in his career (my guess is Sophomore year) and (I bet) shamelessly and cynically published only after he became a big name, this bow-wow gets CB's coveted "4 barf-bags" award.

Historical: The Zimmerman Telegram , by Barbara Tuchman. I'd say read everything Tuchman has written. This one is about cracking a WWI telegram from Germany to Mexico that had big policy implications.

*Success Facililitation Surveys are documents you produce in class to help the professor and TA Facilitate Your Success.

As Yogi says: "If you can't imitate him, don't copy him!"

This course follows The University Policy on Academic Honesty .

Explicitly for this course: Thinking together about problems or programming projects and assignments is fine, and encouraged. Asking technical questions from your fellow students or anybody else, and getting specific answers, is fine, and you're crazy not to.

BUT do NOT share your written answers or code, or what you plan to hand in. That is, don't volunteer it, don't ask for it, don't give it, don't receive it, don't show it, don't look at it. Such sharing of WORK (not thoughts) we must consider Plagiarism and we must take the necessary steps as mandated by the University. In my mind, unless work is surreptitiously stolen, both parties are equally guilty.

There is at least one article (Martin Gardner's 1977 Scientific American article pretty much announcing public key cryptography) on electronic reserve. For this you go to the River Campus Library web pages, follow "Course Resources", search for our class by my name, its name, whatever. There is an explicit pointer in the syllabus.