Just as so you know, the material being covered in this blog will be based on what I learn in class, partly from these books:

• An Introduction to Cryptography with Coding Theory, by W. Trappe and L. Washington
• A First Course in Abstract Algebra, by J. Fraleigh

The first section of this blog, corresponding to the textbook, is going to be about what are referred to as “Classical Cryptosystems”. These types of encryption algorithms are what was used before the invention of computers. The computing power of your cell phone could easily brute force these algorithms, but hopefully we will get a chance to take a look at more elegant ways to attack these systems, which you could do with a pencil and paper if you so desired.

I hope you are as excited for this blog as I am for my classes this semester!

Look for more to come on a regular basis throughout the next few months.