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, 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. 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.

Contents

• Introducing people to data security and cryptography
  • Simple: cryptography for non-engineers
  • Brief engineer-oriented introductions
• Specific topics
  • Hashing
  • Secret key cryptography
  • Public key cryptography: General and DLP
  • Public key cryptography: Elliptic-curve crypto
  • Zero Knowledge Proofs
  • Math
• 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.

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 - introducory 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.

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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.

Secret key cryptography

• FIPS 197 - AES FIPS document.
• List of proposed operation modes of AES, maintained by NIST.
• Recomendation for Block Cipher modes of operation: Methods and Techniques.
• Stick figure guide to AES - if stuff above was a bit hard or you're looking for a good laugh.
• Cache timing attacks on AES - example of designing great practical attack on cipher implementation, by Daniel J. Bernstein
• Cache Attacks and Countermeasures: the Case of AES - side channel attacks on AES, another view, by Dag Arne Osvik, Adi Shamir and Eran Tromer.
• Salsa20 family of stream ciphers - broad explanation of Salsa20 security cipher by Daniel J. Bernstein.
• New Features of Latin Dances: Analysis of Salsa, ChaCha, and Rumba - Analysis of Salsa20 family of ciphers, by Jean-Philippe Aumasson et al.
• ChaCha20-Poly1305 Cipher Suites for Transport Layer Security (TLS) - IETF Draft of ciphersuite family, by Adam Langley et al.
• Differential Cryptanalysis of Salsa20/8 - an great example of stream cipher cryptoanalysis, by Yukiyasu Tsunoo et al.
• AES submission document on Rijndael - original Rijndael proposal by Joan Daemen and Vincent Rijmen

Public key cryptography: General and DLP

• New Directions in Cryptography - seminal paper by Diffie and Hellman, introducing public key cryptography and key exchange/agreement protocol.
• RFC 2631: Diffie-Hellman Key Agreement - an explanation of the Diffie-Hellman methon in more engineering terms.
• A Method for Obtaining Digital Signatures and Public-Key Cryptosystems - original paper introducing RSA algorithm.
• RSA Algorithm - rather education explanation of every bit behind RSA.
• Secure Communications Over Insecure Channels - paper by R. Merkle, predated "New directions in cryptography" though it was published after it. The Diffie-Hellman key exchange is an implementation of such a Merkle system.
• On the Security of Public Key Protocols - Dolev-Yao model is a formal model, used to prove properties of interactive cryptographic protocols.
• How to Share a Secret - A safe method for sharing secrets.
• Twenty Years of Attacks on the RSA Cryptosystem - great inquiry into attacking RSA and it's internals, by Dan Boneh.
• Remote timing attacks are practical - an example in attacking practical crypto implementationby D. Boneh, D. Brumley
• The Equivalence Between the DHP and DLP for Elliptic Curves Used in Practical Applications, Revisited - by K. Bentahar

Public key cryptography: Elliptic-curve crypto

• Elliptic Curve cryptography: A gentle introduction
• Explain me like I'm 5: How digital signatures actually work - EdDSA explained with ease and elegance.
• Elliptic Curve Cryptography: finite fields and discrete logarithms
• Detailed Elliptic Curve cryptography tutorial
• Elliptic Curve Cryptography: ECDH and ECDSA
• Elliptic Curve Cryptography: breaking security and a comparison with RSA
• Elliptic Curve Cryptography: the serpentine course of a paradigm shift - historic inquiry into development of ECC and it's adoption.
• Let's construct an elliptic curve: Introducing Crackpot2065
• Explicit-Formulas Database - for many elliptic curve representation forms.
• Curve25519: new Diffie-Hellman speed records - paper on Curve25519
• Software implementation of the NIST elliptic curves over prime fields - pracitcal example of implementing elliptic curve crypto, by M. Brown et al.
• High-speed high-security signatures - seminal paper on EdDSA signatures on ed25519 curve by Daniel J. Bernstein et al.

Zero Knowledge Proofs

• How to construct zero-knowledge proof systems for NP - classic paper by Goldreich, Micali and Wigderson.
• Proofs that yield nothing but their validity and a Methodology of Cryptographic protocol design - by Goldreich, Micali and Wigderson, a relative to the above.
• A Survey of Noninteractive Zero Knowledge Proof System and Its Applications
• How to Prove a Theorem So No One Else Can Claim It - by Manuel Blum
• Information Theoretic Reductions among Disclosure Problems - Brassau et al.
• Knowledge complexity of interactive proof systems - by GoldWasser, Micali and Rackoff. Defining computational complexity of "knowledge" within zero knowledge proofs.
• A Survey of Zero-Knowledge Proofs with Applications to Cryptography - great intro on original ZKP protocols.

Key Management

• Recommendation for Key Management – Part 1: General - methodologically very relevant document on goals and procedures of key management.

Math

• PRIMES is in P - unconditional deterministic polynomial-time algorithm that determines whether an input number is prime or composite.

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Books

That seems somewhat out of scope, isn't it? But these are books only fully available online for free. Read them as a sequence of papers if you will.

• A Graduate Course in Applied Cryptography - by Dan Boneh and Victor Shoup. A well-balanced introductory course into cryptography, a bit of cryptoanalysis and cryptography-related security.
• CrypTool book - predominantly mathematically oriented information on learning, using and experimenting cryptographic procedures.
• Handbook of Applied Cryptography - by Alfred J. Menezes, Paul C. van Oorschot and Scott A. Vanstone. Good classical introduction into cryptography and ciphers.
• The joy of Cryptography - by Mike Rosulek. A lot of basic stuff covered really well. No ECC.
• A Computational Introduction to Number Theory and Algebra - by Victor Shoup, excellent starters book on math universally used in cryptography.

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Lectures and educational courses

• Understanding cryptography: A textbook for Students and Practitioners - Textbook, great lectures and problems to solve.
• Crypto101 - Crypto 101 is an introductory course on cryptography, freely available for programmers of all ages and skill levels.
• a Course in Cryptography - Lecture notes by Rafael Pass, Abhi Shelat
• Cryptography I - Stanford University course on Coursera, taught by prof. Dan Boneh. Cryptography II is still in development.

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Online crypto challenges

Not exactly papers, but crypto challenges are awesome educational material.

• Cryptopals crypto challenges