ThecreationofpublickeycryptographybyDi?eandHellmanin1976andthe subsequent invention of the RSA public key cryptosystem by Rivest, Shamir, and Adleman in 1978 are watershed events in the long history of secret c- munications. It is hard to overestimate the importance of public key cr- tosystems and their associated digital signature schemes in the modern world of computers and the Internet. This book provides an introduction to the theory of public key cryptography and to the mathematical ideas underlying that theory. Public key cryptography draws on many areas of mathematics, including number theory, abstract algebra, probability, and information theory. Each of these topics is introduced and developed in su?cient detail so that this book provides a self-contained course for the beginning student. The only prerequisite is a ?rst course in linear algebra. On the other hand, students with stronger mathematical backgrounds can move directly to cryptographic applications and still have time for advanced topics such as elliptic curve pairings and lattice-reduction algorithms. Amongthemanyfacetsofmoderncryptography,thisbookchoosestoc- centrate primarily on public key cryptosystems and digital signature schemes. This allows for an in-depth development of the necessary mathematics - quired for both the construction of these schemes and an analysis of their security. The reader who masters the material in this book will not only be well prepared for further study in cryptography, but will have acquired a real understanding of the underlying mathematical principles on which modern cryptography is based.

About the Author

Dr. Jeffrey Hoffstein has been a professor at Brown University since 1989 and has been a visiting professor and tenured professor at several other universities since 1978. His research areas are number theory, automorphic forms, and cryptography. He has authored more than 50 publications.

Dr. Jill Pipher has been a professor at Brown Univesity since 1989. She has been an invited lecturer and has received numerous awards and honors. Her research areas are harmonic analysis, elliptic PDE, and cryptography. She has authored over 40 publications.

Dr. Joseph Silverman has been a professor at Brown University 1988. He served as the Chair of the Brown Mathematics department from 2001–2004. He has received numerous fellowships, grants and awards and is a frequently invited lecturer. His research areas are number theory, arithmetic geometry, elliptic curves, dynamical systems and cryptography. Hehas authored more than120 publications and has had more than 20 doctoral students.

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