Foundations of cryptography : Basic applications

Includes index

Includes bibliography (p.785-794) and references.

5. Encryption Schemes
6. Digital Signatures and Message Authentication
7. General Cryptographic Protocols

Cryptography is concerned with the construction of schemes that should maintain a desired functionality, even under malicious attempts aimed at making them deviate from it. The design of cryptographic systems has to be based on firm foundations; whereas ad-hoc approaches and heuristics are a very dangerous way to go. This work is aimed at presenting firm foundations for cryptography. The foundations of cryptography are the paradigms, approaches and techniques used to conceptualize, define and provide solutions to natural ``security concerns''. The emphasis of the work is on the clarification of fundamental concepts and on demonstrating the feasibility of solving several central cryptographic problems. The current book is the second volume of this work, and it focuses on the main applications of Cryptography: encryption schemes, signature schemes and secure protocols. The first volume focused on the main tools of Modern Cryptography: computational difficulty (one-way functions), pseudorandomness and zero-knowledge proofs.