Skip to content
Welcome to CS 355: Topics in Cryptography — Spring 2026! Please note this is different from CS 355 offered last year. See this offering’s schedule for more details.

Schedule

In this course, we will survey various topics in Cryptography. Below is the tentative schedule. Please click on a lecture to see additional readings and clarifying notes about the lecture. For your convenience, the lectures notes are attached here as well as on each individual lecture page.

Foundations

DateLectureNotes
Mon, Mar 30L1: Overview, OWFs, PRGs, Hardcore bits[PDF]
Wed, Apr 1L2: PRGs continued, PRFs[PDF]
Mon, Apr 6L3: PRPs from PRFs[PDF]
Wed, Apr 8L4: Commitment Schemes[PDF]

Cryptanalysis

DateLectureNotes
Mon, Apr 13L5: Infineon attack[PDF]
Wed, Apr 15L6: Attacks on Groups[PDF]

Elliptic Curve Cryptography

DateLectureNotes
Mon, Apr 20L7: Introduction to Elliptic Curves[PDF]
Wed, Apr 22L8: Pairings[PDF]

Zero Knowledge Proofs

DateLectureNotes
Mon, Apr 27L9: Interactive Proofs and Zero Knowledge[PDF]
Wed, Apr 29L10: Sigma protocols[PDF]
Mon, May 4L11: Non-interactivity & Fiat-Shamir[PDF]
Wed, May 6L12: Polynomial Commitments
Mon, May 11L13: (Polynomial) IOPs

Multi-Party Computation

DateLectureNotes
Wed, May 13L14: OT & Garbled Circuits
Mon, May 18L15: Secret Sharing
Wed, May 20L16: Private Information Retrieval

Lattice Cryptography

DateLectureNotes
Wed, May 27L17: LWE & Regev encryption
Mon, Jun 1L18: Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE)[PDF]

Last class

DateLectureNotes
Wed, Jun 3Last class: Guest lecture