Security Engineering and Cryptography Course

Lesson 1 • Security Engineering Lifecycle

Maps security activities to each phase of the software development lifecycle. Establishes the process context for all technical controls taught later.

Lesson 2 • Attacker Mindset and Adversary Models

Examines attacker motivations, capabilities, and tactics to inform defensive design. Builds empathy for adversarial thinking as a core engineering skill.

Lesson 3 • Core Security Principles and Concepts

Introduces confidentiality, integrity, availability, and non-repudiation as design drivers. Connects foundational principles to every subsequent engineering decision in the course.

Lesson 4 • Security Requirements Engineering

Covers eliciting, documenting, and validating security requirements from stakeholders. Links requirements to verifiable controls and acceptance criteria.

Lesson 1 • Probability and Information Theory

Teaches entropy, randomness, and probabilistic security definitions. Grounds security proofs and key-space analysis in rigorous information-theoretic terms.

Lesson 2 • Computational Complexity for Cryptography

Explains hardness assumptions and complexity classes that justify cryptographic security. Enables students to evaluate whether a scheme's security is well-founded.

Lesson 3 • Modular Arithmetic and Number Theory

Covers modular operations, congruences, and prime number properties essential to cryptography. Provides the arithmetic toolkit for all symmetric and asymmetric algorithms.

Lesson 1 • Classical and Historical Ciphers

Surveys substitution, transposition, and Vigenère ciphers to illustrate fundamental weaknesses. Motivates modern design requirements through historical cryptanalysis.

Lesson 2 • Block Cipher Design and AES

Examines substitution-permutation networks, Feistel structures, and AES internals. Provides the structural knowledge needed to evaluate block cipher security.

Lesson 3 • Authenticated Encryption Schemes

Integrates confidentiality and integrity into combined AEAD constructions such as AES-GCM and ChaCha20-Poly1305. Connects to secure protocol design in later chapters.

Lesson 4 • Modes of Operation

Covers ECB, CBC, CTR, GCM, and other modes with their security properties and failure cases. Enables correct mode selection for specific confidentiality and integrity needs.

Lesson 1 • RSA Cryptosystem

Derives RSA from integer factorisation hardness and covers key generation, encryption, and signing. Highlights padding requirements and common implementation pitfalls.

Lesson 2 • Digital Signatures and Non-Repudiation

Formalises signature security models and covers DSA, EdDSA, and blind signatures. Connects signature schemes to identity and non-repudiation requirements.

Lesson 3 • Key Encapsulation and Hybrid Encryption

Combines asymmetric key transport with symmetric encryption for practical data protection. Prepares students to design hybrid systems used in TLS and secure messaging.

Lesson 4 • Elliptic Curve Cryptography

Covers elliptic curve groups, ECDH, and ECDSA with emphasis on curve selection and security. Demonstrates efficiency advantages over RSA at equivalent security levels.

Lesson 1 • SHA Family and Modern Hash Algorithms

Covers SHA-1 weaknesses, SHA-2 internals, and SHA-3 sponge design. Guides algorithm selection based on security requirements and performance constraints.

Lesson 2 • Password Hashing and Key Derivation

Covers bcrypt, scrypt, Argon2, and PBKDF2 for password storage and key stretching. Addresses memory-hardness and parallelism resistance against offline attacks.

Lesson 3 • Hash Function Properties and Design

Defines preimage, second-preimage, and collision resistance with formal security models. Establishes the properties that all subsequent hash applications depend on.

Lesson 4 • Commitment Schemes and Zero-Knowledge Basics

Introduces hash-based commitments and the intuition behind zero-knowledge proofs. Connects these primitives to privacy-preserving protocol design in later chapters.

Lesson 1 • Certificate Lifecycle Management

Teaches issuance, renewal, revocation, and expiry workflows for operational PKI. Connects lifecycle gaps to real-world outages and security incidents.

Lesson 2 • X.509 Certificates and Certificate Authorities

Covers certificate structure, extensions, and CA hierarchy design for trust establishment. Provides the structural knowledge required for all PKI deployment decisions.

Lesson 3 • Key Agreement Protocols and Rotation

Covers TLS 1.3 key schedule, Signal protocol ratcheting, and automated key rotation strategies. Prepares students to implement forward-secret and break-in-recovery key management.

Lesson 4 • Trust Models and Web of Trust

Compares hierarchical PKI, web of trust, and DANE trust models with their security trade-offs. Enables informed trust architecture decisions for diverse deployment contexts.

Lesson 1 • Protocol Security Goals and Threat Models

Defines authentication, secrecy, and integrity goals within the Dolev-Yao adversary model. Frames all subsequent protocol analysis in a consistent formal threat context.

Lesson 2 • Common Protocol Attacks

Examines replay, reflection, man-in-the-middle, and downgrade attacks with concrete examples. Builds the adversarial analysis skill needed to harden protocol implementations.

Lesson 3 • TLS and Secure Transport Protocols

Analyses TLS 1.3 handshake, record layer, and downgrade protections in depth. Connects protocol internals to the cryptographic primitives covered in earlier chapters.

Lesson 4 • Formal Protocol Verification Methods

Introduces ProVerif, Tamarin, and BAN logic for automated protocol correctness proofs. Demonstrates how formal tools catch flaws missed by manual analysis.

Lesson 1 • Cryptographic Implementation Vulnerabilities

Covers timing side-channels, padding oracle attacks, and fault injection in cryptographic code. Connects implementation flaws to the theoretical primitives studied in earlier chapters.

Lesson 2 • Cryptographic API Design and Misuse

Analyses common API design failures that lead to misuse, including key confusion and nonce exposure. Guides students in designing APIs that are hard to use incorrectly.

Lesson 3 • Side-Channel Analysis Techniques

Teaches power analysis, electromagnetic analysis, and acoustic side-channels against hardware. Prepares students to evaluate physical security of cryptographic devices.

Lesson 4 • Cryptographic Agility and Migration

Teaches algorithm negotiation, deprecation planning, and migration strategies for aging cryptographic systems. Prepares students to manage long-lived systems through algorithm transitions.