Cryptography Research

With my cryptography internship at Motorola drawing to a close, I thought this would be a good time to share some valuable crypto resources I gained along the way. Here are Prof. Edward Schaefer's lesson plan notes: http://math.scu.edu/~eschaefe/crylec.pdf This is probably the most comprehensive crypto analyses you can find out there. It covers it all. From the history of cryptography, he moves into the math, simple applications, and cyphers. Whether you want to know the nitty-gritty details, or just how to use it, Schaefer explains. Then, he teaches about the modern crypto systems (DES, AES, RSA), all the way up to elliptic curve cryptography. Next, Schaefer teaches many different signing algorithms, and gives an extensive list of, practical and modern, crypto applications. Finally, Professor Edward Schaefer teaches an entire section (roughly 40 pages) on crypto-analysis and crypto-attacks! Comprehensive and cool!!

But you may be saying, "Thats old news!", or, "We know this!".
Well if you knew all that, then maybe you should check out this list of crypto researchers and their websites: http://pages.swcp.com/~mccurley/cryptographers/cryptographers.html There are ALOT of really smart people on that list, and they all have some really neat studies. By far, one of the most exciting articles I found, was this position-based quantum-crypto research: http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1005/1005.1750v1.pdf
Now this stuff is cutting edge!! Position-based crypto would be huge, if they could pull it off without location spoofing (classic cryptography's problem). And with quantum entanglement it is definitely possible, but probably difficult. This is really fascinating work, because position-based cryptography is one of the few differentiating factors between classic crypto, and quantum-crypto. According to there research, position-based quantum-crypto offers unconditional security regardless of how much information the attacker has. So long as the recipient is at the determined location the message can be decrypted, position being the only credential necessary! Fascinating stuff :D