Skip to main content

SC4010 - Applied Cryptography

Lecture Clarity:
(3/5)
Content Relevance:
(4/5)
Content Difficulty:
(4/5)
Overall Workload:
(3/5)
Team Dependency:
(2/5)

Course Summary​

Professor Tay Kian Boon teaches this course, which covers the basics of cryptography and cybersecurity. Some topics involve calculations, but they aren’t too advanced as long as you understand the methods and logic correctly. Tutorials mainly focus on case studies and certain attacks, such as birthday attacks and side-channel attacks. The topics covered in this course include:

  1. Stream Ciphers
  2. Block Ciphers
  3. Hash Functions
  4. Diffie-Hellman Key Exchange
  5. RSA (Rivest–Shamir–Adleman)
  6. DSA (Digital Signature Algorithm)
  7. Elliptic Curve Cryptography

Workload​

The overall workload for this course is manageable if you stay on track. It’s advisable to attend tutorial sessions for explanations and Q&A since the answer keys provided are very brief and can sometimes be confusing. You can start the project as soon as you find a partner, but about halfway through the course, the professor will share a file with possible project topics.

Projects​

The course assessment is structured as follows:

  • Quiz 1 (40%)
  • Quiz 2 (40%)
  • Project (20%) (teams of 2) For the project, your team can present on any topic related to the course. You can choose to do one big project or two smaller ones. Later, you’ll present your work in front of the professor. Whether you need to submit your code depends on if the professor wants to see it. For easier topics, the professor expects something more impressive to stand out. It’s generally easier to score marks with harder topics like quantum computing, but be prepared for lots of questions during your presentation.

Tips to Do Well​

Since the quizzes carry more weight, it’s better to focus on them. They can be quite challenging and sometimes cover material beyond the lectures, so it’s important to have a solid fundamental understanding of the topics. Make sure to attend tutorials and ask the professor questions during those sessions. For the project, fully understand how it works and why you’re doing each part, as the professor may ask detailed questions. If you and your partner decide to do two smaller projects, both of you should understand each other’s work because the professor might ask about your partner’s project as well.

Written by MS