Since the first written word, the need for governments, corporations, and individuals to safeguard information has created an ongoing evolutionary battle between codemakers and codebreakers.
Cryptography is the study of secret writing such as codes and ciphers.
In this course, students begin their journey into cryptography with an introduction to many early techniques for creating secret writing, such as cipher wheels, the Caesar shift, monoalphabetic substitution, and the Vigenere cipher. They move on to learn about modern techniques including RSA public key cryptography. Delving deeper into modern techniques, students explore how data transmitted by computer can be secured with digital encryption. Discussions about the vulnerabilities of each encryption system enable students to attack and decrypt messages according to techniques such as frequency analysis and cribbing. Students apply this information to encrypt and decrypt their own secret writing.