Certificate Program – USF Crypto

USF Center for Cryptographic Research

Crypto Certificate

USF Certificate Program

The Center for Cryptographic Research offers an undergraduate certificate program in Cryptography aimed at students majoring in either Mathematics or Computer Science. This program includes courses in Mathematics and in Computer Science, including newly created courses on the applications of quantum computing to cryptography. This program provides comprehensive set of courses pertaining to the various aspects of cryptography taught at USF. Such a program is special to USF while at many other universities, cryptography education is siloed, especially between science and engineering, thus preventing the training of versatile specialists who are very needed in this industry’s workforce. To complete the program, the students need to choose 4 out of the 5 areas described below, which corresponds to a total of 12 credits.

Fundamental Aspects of Cryptography

The students will learn the fundamental notions of cryptography, including the most important protocol such as encryption, authentication, key agreement in the course MAD4471 “Introduction to Cryptography and Coding Theory”. In this course, there is a strong emphasis on the rigorous notions of security for the cryptographic schemes that are introduced. It also features computer projects based on actual “Capture The Flag” cybersecurity competition, and a special custom-made Blockchain Challenge.

Hardware Security

The design of cryptosystems needs to account for hardware vulnerabilities. In the course CDA4321 “Cryptographic Hardware and Embedded Systems”, students learn about side channel attacks which are a way to exploit information from physical measurements on the device such as power, heat, noise … They learn the computer engineering skills that allow the design of systems that are not vulnerable to these attacks.

Applied Cryptography

Cryptography is ubiquitous in our daily lives, from banking transactions, cloud services, GSM communications. In the course CIS4212 “Privacy-Preserving and Trustworthy Cyber-Infrastructures”, students learn about practical applications of fundamental cryptographic schemes such as hash functions, private and public key encryptions, and more advanced concepts such as searchable encryption, Oblivious RAM and blockchain protocols.

Theoretical Computing

The analysis of the security and of the efficiency of cryptographic schemes relies on a solid background in the theory of computation and algorithmic complexity. In the course MAD 4504 “Theory of Computation”, students learn about formal models of computation such as Turing machines. They also learn about computational complexity which is the theoretical basis for the evaluation of the cost of algorithms used in cryptographic protocols.

Quantum Computing

The students can choose one of the two newly created courses that deal with the aspects of quantum computing affecting the security of existing schemes deployed on the internet: MAD4515 “Mathematics of Quantum Computing” and CIS4930 “Quantum Computing and Algorithms”. The transition to quantum-safe alternatives has become a major stake in industry, science, and even national security. Indeed, NIST is currently conducting a standardization process of the future generation of cryptographic schemes that will feature quantum-resistance while the NSA has announced its plans to transition to quantum-safe encryption schemes. In this context, knowledge of quantum computing gives our graduate an edge in the industrial landscape of the 21 st century.