Cryptology: A new application of mathematics (Q1908125)

Cryptology is the science of secure communications. Cryptographic applications have been increased rapidly during the past 25 years. The paper gives an introduction and survey to contemporary cryptology based on mathematical techniques and tools. After a short description of conventional or classical cryptosystems like the data encryption standard, the idea of public key cryptography is presented. The development of public key cryptosystems was mainly motivated by the search for digital signatures and problems of key management. The concept of public key cryptosystems is explained by a graph theoretical model. Furthermore, the arithmetic of large integers is illustrated. Then the ElGamal procedure for digital signatures based on the discrete logarithm problem and the RSA-cryptosystem based on the factorization problem are presented. Zero-knowledge protocols for authentication and an outlook to other cryptologic protocols like oblivious transfer, digital signatures, secret sharing etc. conclude the paper.