Ciphers and Number Theory course material
This is the course home page for MA2609 Ciphers and Number Theory. Unless otherwise stated, all files are in .pdf format.
Exercises
Here are copies of each of the exercise sheets given out so far this year, and of any solution sheets associated with them.
- Exercise Sheet 1.
- Exercise Sheet 2.
- Exercise Sheet 3.
- Exercise Sheet 4.
- Exercise Sheet 5 and comments.
- Exercise Sheet 6.
- Exercise Sheet 7.
- Exercise Sheet 8.
Coursework assignments
There will be two assessed courseworks.
Other handouts
Notes will appear once a fortnight.
Books
The following pair of books cover all of the course material. The second is a little more advanced (and far more extensive).
- Buchmann: Introduction to Cryptography (Springer, 2003)
- Baldoni, Ciliberto and Piacentini Cattaneo: Elementary Number Theory, Crytography and Codes (Springer, 2009)
Two alternatives to the above are
- Coutinho: The Mathematics of Ciphers: Number Theory and RSA Cryptography (Peters, 1999)
- Rosen: Elementary Number Theory and its Applications (Addison-Wesley, 1988)
A popular account of the history of ciphers with many examples is
- Singh: The Code Book (Fourth Estate, 2000)
This book has an accompanying CDROM, which is available for free download here. This includes tools for encrypting, decrypting and cracking various ciphers, as well as lots of other material. Some of these tools are available as interactive webpages here.
A classic introduction to the art of breaking ciphers is
- Gaines: Cryptanalysis (Dover, 1989)
Anton Cox
(A.G.Cox@city.ac.uk)
Last Modified: Fri 19 Mar 2010