17 Dec 2021 (updated 9 Aug 2026)
Notes from MATH 470 — Communications and Cryptography at Texas A&M during Fall 2021 with Dr. Josiah Park.
Based off of the lectures and An Introduction to Mathematical Cryptography by J. Hoffstein, J. Pipher, and J.H. Silverman.
The course is an exploration into the mathematical foundations of cryptography and how they are used in public- and private-key cryptosystems, with topics covering modular groups and fields, primality testing, factorization, and elliptic curves.
Specific topics include Diffie-Hellman key-exchange, RSA, AKS/Baillie-PSW/Miller-Rabin primality testing, Pollard rho/sieves/Lenstra factorization.
Notation
2026 Update
Over the years I've come to prefer the set notation even if it means that I have to explicitly state instead of using a parenthesis for when something is exclusive.
^a: Not everything has been touched in my update; some portions of these notes may use the interval notation, and in others the set notation.