MATH-489: Number theory in cryptography

Summary

The goal of the course is to introduce basic notions from public key cryptography (PKC) as well as basic number-theoretic methods and algorithms for cryptanalysis of protocols and schemes based on PKC.

Official source

https://edu.epfl.ch/coursebook/en/number-theory-in-cryptography-MATH-489

Moodle Page

http://go.epfl.ch/MATH-489

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Lectures in this course (26)

Related concepts (409)

Related courses (80)

Related MOOCs (24)

Index calculus algorithm

In computational number theory, the index calculus algorithm is a probabilistic algorithm for computing discrete logarithms. Dedicated to the discrete logarithm in where is a prime, index calculus leads to a family of algorithms adapted to finite fields and to some families of elliptic curves. The algorithm collects relations among the discrete logarithms of small primes, computes them by a linear algebra procedure and finally expresses the desired discrete logarithm with respect to the discrete logarithms of small primes.

Zero-knowledge proof

In cryptography, a zero-knowledge proof or zero-knowledge protocol is a method by which one party (the prover) can prove to another party (the verifier) that a given statement is true, while avoiding conveying to the verifier any information beyond the mere fact of the statement's truth. The intuition underlying zero-knowledge proofs is that it is trivial to prove the possession of certain information by simply revealing it; the challenge is to prove this possession without revealing the information, or any aspect of it whatsoever.

RSA numbers

In mathematics, the RSA numbers are a set of large semiprimes (numbers with exactly two prime factors) that were part of the RSA Factoring Challenge. The challenge was to find the prime factors of each number. It was created by RSA Laboratories in March 1991 to encourage research into computational number theory and the practical difficulty of factoring large integers. The challenge was ended in 2007. RSA Laboratories (which is an acronym of the creators of the technique; Rivest, Shamir and Adleman) published a number of semiprimes with 100 to 617 decimal digits.

Cryptanalysis

Cryptanalysis (from the Greek kryptós, "hidden", and analýein, "to analyze") refers to the process of analyzing information systems in order to understand hidden aspects of the systems. Cryptanalysis is used to breach cryptographic security systems and gain access to the contents of encrypted messages, even if the cryptographic key is unknown. In addition to mathematical analysis of cryptographic algorithms, cryptanalysis includes the study of side-channel attacks that do not target weaknesses in the cryptographic algorithms themselves, but instead exploit weaknesses in their implementation.

Finite field arithmetic

In mathematics, finite field arithmetic is arithmetic in a finite field (a field containing a finite number of elements) contrary to arithmetic in a field with an infinite number of elements, like the field of rational numbers. There are infinitely many different finite fields. Their number of elements is necessarily of the form pn where p is a prime number and n is a positive integer, and two finite fields of the same size are isomorphic.