Awesome Crypto Papers

A curated list of cryptography papers, articles, tutorials and howtos for non-cryptographers.

NotesThe goal of this list is to provide educational reading material for different levels of cryptographic knowledge. I started it because my day job onboarding engineers at Cossack Labs includes educating them in cryptographic matters and giving advise what to read on specific topics, and that involves finding the same materials repeatedly. Hopefully, it will be useful for someone else as well. It is aimed at people who are using cryptography in higher-level security systems to implement database encryption, secure sharing, end-to-end encryption in various schemes, and should understand how it works, how it fails and how it is attacked. It is not a list of notable / important / historically important papers (although many of them are here). It is not aimed at academics (who have better grasp of what they need anyway), nor it is aimed for systematic study of wanna-be cryptographers (who better follow structured approach under professional guidance). It will be extended gradually as I find something of "must-have" value. Pull requests are very welcome.Contents

Introducing people to data security and cryptography.

Simple: cryptography for non-engineers.

Brief engineer-oriented introductions.

Specific topics.

Hashing - important bits on modern and classic hashes.

Secret key cryptography - all things symmetric encryption.

Cryptanalysis - attacking cryptosystems.

Public key cryptography: General and DLP - RSA, DH and other classic techniques.

Public key cryptography: Elliptic-curve crypto - ECC, with focus on pratcial cryptosystems.

Zero Knowledge Proofs - Proofs of knowledge and other non-revealing cryptosystems.

Math - useful math materials in cryptographic context.

Post-quantum cryptography - Cryptography in post-quantum period.

Books.

Lectures and educational courses.

Online crypto challenges.

The listIntroducing people to data security and cryptographySimple: cryptography for non-engineers

Nuts and Bolts of Encryption: A Primer for Policymakers.

Keys under Doormats - Or why cryptography shouldn't be backdoored, by a all-star committee of crypto researches from around the world.

Brief introductions

An Overview of Cryptography - By Gary C. Kessler.

Using Encryption for Authentication in Large Networks - By Needham, Schroeder: this is were crypto-based auth starts.

Communication Theory of Secrecy Systems - Fundamental cryptography paper by Claude Shannon.

General cryptographic interest

Another Look at “Provable Security” - Inquiries into formalism and naive intuition behind security proofs, by Neal Koblitz et al.

The security impact of a new cryptographic library - Introductory paper on NaCl, discussing important aspects of implementing cryptography and using it as a larger building block in security systems, by Daniel J. Bernstein, Tanja Lange, Peter Schwabe.

Specific topicsHashing

FIPS 198-1: HMACs - The Keyed-Hash Message Authentication Code FIPS document.

FIPS 202: SHA3 - SHA-3 Standard: Permutation-Based Hash and Extendable-Output Functions.

Birthday problem - The best simple explanation of math behind birthday attack.

On the Security of HMAC and NMAC Based on HAVAL, MD4, MD5, SHA-0 and SHA-1 - Security analysis of different legacy HMAC schemes by Jongsung Kim et al.

Awesome Crypto Papers

A curated list of cryptography papers, articles, tutorials and howtos for non-cryptographers.

Notes

The goal of this list is to provide educational reading material for different levels of cryptographic knowledge. I started it because my day job onboarding engineers at Cossack Labs includes educating them in cryptographic matters and giving advise what to read on specific topics, and that involves finding the same materials repeatedly. Hopefully, it will be useful for someone else as well.

It is aimed at people who are using cryptography in higher-level security systems to implement database encryption, secure sharing, end-to-end encryption in various schemes, and should understand how it works, how it fails and how it is attacked. It is not a list of notable / important / historically important papers (although many of them are here). It is not aimed at academics (who have better grasp of what they need anyway), nor it is aimed for systematic study of wanna-be cryptographers (who better follow structured approach under professional guidance).

It will be extended gradually as I find something of "must-have" value. Pull requests are very welcome.

Introducing people to data security and cryptography.
Simple: cryptography for non-engineers.
Brief engineer-oriented introductions.
Specific topics.
Hashing - important bits on modern and classic hashes.
Secret key cryptography - all things symmetric encryption.
Cryptanalysis - attacking cryptosystems.
Public key cryptography: General and DLP - RSA, DH and other classic techniques.
Public key cryptography: Elliptic-curve crypto - ECC, with focus on pratcial cryptosystems.
Zero Knowledge Proofs - Proofs of knowledge and other non-revealing cryptosystems.
Math - useful math materials in cryptographic context.
Post-quantum cryptography - Cryptography in post-quantum period.
Books.
Lectures and educational courses.
Online crypto challenges.

The list

Introducing people to data security and cryptography

Simple: cryptography for non-engineers

Nuts and Bolts of Encryption: A Primer for Policymakers.
Keys under Doormats - Or why cryptography shouldn't be backdoored, by a all-star committee of crypto researches from around the world.

Brief introductions

An Overview of Cryptography - By Gary C. Kessler.
Using Encryption for Authentication in Large Networks - By Needham, Schroeder: this is were crypto-based auth starts.
Communication Theory of Secrecy Systems - Fundamental cryptography paper by Claude Shannon.

General cryptographic interest

Another Look at “Provable Security” - Inquiries into formalism and naive intuition behind security proofs, by Neal Koblitz et al.
The security impact of a new cryptographic library - Introductory paper on NaCl, discussing important aspects of implementing cryptography and using it as a larger building block in security systems, by Daniel J. Bernstein, Tanja Lange, Peter Schwabe.

Specific topics

Hashing

FIPS 198-1: HMACs - The Keyed-Hash Message Authentication Code FIPS document.
FIPS 202: SHA3 - SHA-3 Standard: Permutation-Based Hash and Extendable-Output Functions.
Birthday problem - The best simple explanation of math behind birthday attack.
On the Security of HMAC and NMAC Based on HAVAL, MD4, MD5, SHA-0 and SHA-1 - Security analysis of different legacy HMAC schemes by Jongsung Kim et al.