Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering George Mason University Volgenau School of Engineering

General Information

Covers basic concepts of cryptology, types of cryptosystems, implementation of security services, key management, public key certificates, public key infrastructure, e-mail and web security. Discusses modern secret-key ciphers, modes of operation, hash functions, message authentication codes, public key cryptography, and digital signature schemes. Covers cryptographic standards and secure internet protocols. Introduces educational and public domain software implementing modern cryptographic algorithms.

TypeDayTimeLocationInstructor
Lectures Tuesday, Thursday 3:00 pm -4:15 pm in Engineering Building Jens-Peter Kaps

Documents

  • Class Calendar: (pdf)
  • Syllabus: (pdf)

Instructor

Dr. Jens-Peter Kaps
Office: Engineering Building, Room 3222
Email: jkaps'at'gmu.edu

Office Hours

  • Tuesday 1:00 pm to 2:00 pm
  • Thursday 4:30 pm to 5:30 pm

Additional office hours are by appointment only (see the Contact page for how to setup an appointment).

Prerequisites

  • CYSE 330 Introduction to Network Security (grade C or better)
  • or
    • ECE 465 Computer Networking Protocols (grade C or better)
  • or
    • CS 455 Computer Communications and Networking (grade C or better)

    Projects

    Laboratory exercises will involve getting familiar with selected implementations of cryptographic algorithms and protocols and with the FOBOS side-channel analysis platform. Based on this knowledge and your own experiments, you will be asked to solve a set of simple problems, and prepare a short report including answers to the questions included in the instruction.

    Textbook

    Understanding Cryptography by Christof Paar and Jan Pelzl, Springer-Verlag, 2009, ISBN: 978-3-642-04101-3. If you are a Mason student you can access this book on Springer Link. The lecture follows to some extend this book.

    Cryptography and Network Security: Principles and Practice by William Stallings, Prentice Hall; 7th edition, 2016, ISBN: 978-0134444284. You can also use the 6th edition.

    Handbook of Applied Cryptography by Alfred J. Menezes, Paul C. van Oorschot, and Scott A. Vanstone, CRC Press, Inc.; 1996, ISBN: 0-84-938523-7. (all chapters of this book can be downloaded from the book web page)

    You can find links to more interesting books on the Literature page.