We all keep secrets—from our locker codes to our passwords to our online interactions. And we choose to share those secrets only with those whom we trust. So, too, do organizations, businesses, governments, and armies. In Cryptography, Panos Louridas provides a broad and accessible introduction to cryptography, the art and science of keeping and revealing secrets. Louridas explains just how cryptography works to keep our communications confidential, tracing it back all the way to its ancient roots. Then he follows its long and winding path to where we are today and reads the signs that point to where it may go tomorrow.
A few years back, interest in cryptography was restricted to specialists. Today, as we all live our lives attuned to our digital footprint and the privacy issues it entails, it becomes more and more essential to have a basic understanding of cryptography and its applications to everyday life. Starting with classical cryptography, Cryptography takes the listener all the way up to the twenty-first century cryptographic applications that underpin our lives in the digital realm. Along the way, Louridas also explains concepts such as symmetric cryptography, asymmetric cryptography, cryptographic protocols and applications, and finally, quantum and post-Quantum cryptography as well as the links between cryptography and computer security.
Digital technology runs on algorithms, sets of instructions that describe how to do something efficiently. Application areas range from search engines to tournament scheduling, DNA sequencing, and machine learning. Arguing that every educated person today needs to have some understanding of algorithms and what they do, in this volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series, Panos Louridas offers an introduction to algorithms that is accessible to nonspecialists. Louridas explains not just what algorithms are but also how they work, offering a wide range of examples and keeping mathematics to a minimum.
After discussing what an algorithm does and how its effectiveness can be measured, Louridas covers three of the most fundamental applications areas: graphs, which describe networks, from eighteenth-century problems to today's social networks; searching, and how to find the fastest way to search; and sorting, and the importance of choosing the best algorithm for particular tasks. He then presents larger-scale applications: PageRank, Google's founding algorithm; and neural networks and deep learning. Finally, Louridas describes how all algorithms are nothing more than simple moves with pen and paper, and how from such a humble foundation rise all their spectacular achievements.
