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Level 2 · M.Sc

MSc Cryptography

Cryptography · Live · v0

Cryptography foundations — symmetric and public-key primitives, protocols, and correct implementation practice.

Path type

Cryptography

Requirements

Open entry

Enrollment

€9.95

Deadline

Next cohort starts 2027-09-06 (AY 2027/28)

Length

~1 year · 42 phases

Language

English · Español

Content freshness

Curriculum updated 2026-08-22 · content rev 3d31b392

Cortex Credits (CC)

126 CC
What are Cortex Credits?

Syllabus

View the phase syllabus

0. Foundations & Tooling
1. Security Goals & Threat Models
2. The Toy Lab & the Running "Secure Message" Protocol
3. Modular Arithmetic & the Integers mod n
4. Groups, Rings, Fields & GF(2^n)
5. Number Theory
6. CRT & Fast Exponentiation
7. Probability, Entropy & the Birthday Bound
8. Classical Ciphers & Cryptanalysis
9. Perfect Secrecy: the One-Time Pad
10. Stream Ciphers, LFSRs & Keystream Reuse
11. Block Ciphers: SPN & Feistel
12. AES from Scratch
13. Modes of Operation
14. Padding & the Padding-Oracle Attack
15. Cryptographic Hashing
16. MACs, HMAC & Authenticated Encryption
17. Entropy Sources, CSPRNGs & Seeding
18. Public-Key Intuition & Trapdoor Functions
19. RSA from Scratch
20. Diffie–Hellman & Discrete Log
21. Elliptic-Curve Groups
22. ECDH & ECDSA
23. Key Exchange, Forward Secrecy & Hybrid Encryption
24. Post-Quantum Preview
25. Digital Signatures & Non-Repudiation
26. Certificates, X.509 & the PKI Trust Model
27. TLS 1.3 as a Protocol
28. Password Hashing & KDFs
29. Key Management, Rotation & HSMs
30. Commitment Schemes & Zero-Knowledge Intuition
31. Side Channels & Constant-Time Code
32. Implementation Pitfalls
33. Secret Sharing & Threshold Cryptography
34. End-to-End Messaging & the Double Ratchet
35. Cryptographic Protocol Analysis
36. Crypto Agility, Deprecation & Migration
37. Cryptanalysis Techniques
38. Building a Small Crypto Library
39. Capstone: an Authenticated, Forward-Secret Messaging Protocol
40. Hardening, Cryptanalysis Postmortem & "What's Next"
41. Portal Integration

Syllabus →

Enrolment prerequisites

• A verified account and admissions-committee approval.