Foundations of Cryptography: Basic Tools, Vol. 1

Cryptography is concerned with the conceptualization, definition and construction of computing systems that address security concerns. This book presents a rigorous and systematic treatment of the foundational issues: defining cryptographic tasks and solving new cryptographic problems using existing tools. It focuses on the basic mathematical tools: computational difficulty (one-way functions), pseudorandomness and zero-knowledge proofs. Rather than describing ad-hoc approaches, this book emphasizes the clarification of fundamental concepts and the demonstration of the feasibility of solving cryptographic problems. It is suitable for use in a graduate course on cryptography and as a reference book for experts.

Focuses on the basic mathematical tools needed for cryptographic design: computational difficulty (one-way functions), pseudorandomness and zero-knowledge proofs.

Oded Goldreich is a Professor of Computer Science at the Weizmann Institute of Science and an Incumbent of the Meyer W. Weisgal Professorial Chair. He is an editor for the SIAM Journal on Computing, the Journal of Cryptology, and Computational Complexity, and previously authored the books Modern Cryptography, Probabilistic Proofs and Pseudorandomness, Computational Complexity: A Conceptual Perspective, and the two-volume work Foundations of Cryptography.