Course Policies
Attendance
Attending lectures and keeping up with the readings is crucial for success in CSE 107. You must not register for another class whose lecture times overlap those of CSE 107, even in part.
Office Hours
Your instructor and TA will each hold regular office hours, listed on the course home page. Office hours are the best way to get extended help with the course material. Please come to office hours!
Readings and Textbooks
There is no required textbook for this class.
We will follow the presentation and notation in Mike Rosulek’s The Joy of Cryptography. Unfortunately the full textbook won’t be posted online until after the quarter ends, so you will need to buy a printed copy from MIT Press if you want to follow along. (You could also take a look at an earlier, incomplete 2021 draft.)
You can also look at Katz and Lindell’s Introduction to Modern Cryptography, currently in a revised 3rd edition. Used copies of the first edition and second edition should be reasonably priced, and may still be useful.
Finally, you can also look at Boneh and Shoup’s definitive text, A Graduate Course in Applied Cryptography, which is open-access. As the name suggests, Boneh-Shoup is written for graduate students and may be more challenging to follow.
The course calendar lists the sections in Rosulek, Katz-Lindell, and Boneh-Shoup that correspond to each lecture. (The three books don’t necessarily agree about what to cover for each topic, though!)
Additional (optional) resources are listed on the Resources page.
Assignments
You will have several problem sets over the quarter. They will be a combination of written proof-based exercises and programming exercises using the Playcrypt library.
You are expected to write up your homework solutions yourself. You may discuss the problems with small groups of your fellow classmates. Please credit your collaborators on your homework submission.
Exams
We will have one in-class, 80-minute midterm exam, planned for Tuesday 5 May. We will have an in-person, 180-minute final exam during our registrar-assigned final exam slot, Tuesday 9 June starting at 11:30 am.
Grading
The homework assignments will count for 40% of your class score. The midterm exam will count for 20% of your class score. The final exam will count for the remaining 40% of your score.
We expect to apply the following cutoffs in translating scores to letter grades: A/B cutoff at 85%; B/C cutoff at 76%; C/D cutoff at 67%; and D/F cutoff at 58%. We may adjust these cutoffs (downward) if we determine that some assignments were more difficult than intended. Plus and minus cutoffs will be determined based on score distribution. Participation—in lecture, at office hours, and on Piazza—may affect your final grade at the margin.
Assignment Preparation and Submission
All homework assignments must be submitted using Gradescope. Submissions by other means—on paper, by e-mail, etc.—will not be accepted.
Late policy
Unless otherwise stated, assignments will be due by 11:59 PM on the due date.
Each student will have a total of seven (7) twenty-four hour extensions (“late days”) for the quarter. Late days can be used, in twenty-four hour quantums, on any assignment due date.
No additional extensions will be given for any reason. Once all late days have been used up, late assignments will not be accepted. We encourage you to hold on to your late days so you can use them in an emergency.
Each late assignment submission must indicate how many late days it uses. Once used, late days are permanently deducted from your balance. Late days cannot be reassigned after the fact.
Collaboration Policy
You should write up the homework assignments entirely on your own. You may discuss the problems with small groups of your fellow classmates. Please credit your collaborators on your homework submission.
You must not discuss the assignments with anyone who is not enrolled in CSE 107. This includes both people at UCSD and people not at UCSD.
If you are unsure about what constitutes allowed collaboration, ask the course staff!
Book and Internet Use Policy
You must not seek out solutions to specific assigned problems on the Internet, from computer security courses offered at other universities, or from computer security courses offered in previous quarters at UCSD. If you consult any external resources while working on an assignment, you must note those resources in your assignment submission.
If you are unsure about what constitutes allowed use of outside resources, ask the course staff!
Are Artificial Intelligence Tools Allowed?
We will treat use of artificial intelligence tools in CSE 107 in as a violation of our academic integrity policy (see below).
Posting of Solutions
You must not post online or otherwise distribute to others your solutions to the exercises or programming projects in this course. This prohibition applies both during and after the quarter. This prohibition specifically covers posting any programming assignments to GitHub or similar sites except in a private repository.
Students violating this policy will be subjected to the academic integrity disciplinary process.
Academic Integrity
Failure to follow the collaboration policy on assignments or exams, turning in other people’s work as your own, or any use of artificial intelligence tools (regardless of whether their output is submitted as your work or not) is a violation of the course academic integrity policy.
To detect instances of academic integrity violations in programming assignments we may use 3rd party software.
The penalty assessed for any violation of the academic integrity policy is a failing course grade. No exceptions.