CS ATLAS A map of computing

Domain 12 —

Security & Cryptography

5 topics1976 — 1995
1976Public-Key Cryptography1979Hashes & Message Authentication1988Vulnerabilities & Attacks1994Post-Quantum Cryptography1995TLS & Secure Transport

Chronology — 22 entries

Chronology

Every milestone in this domain, ordered by date. An event shared by several topics is counted once.

1976Diffie–HellmanPublic-key cryptography and key exchange.Public-Key Cryptography
1977RSAThe difficulty of factoring large integers.Public-Key Cryptography
1979Merkle treesA structure for verifying integrity.Hashes & Message Authentication
1985Elliptic-curve cryptographyShorter keys for the same strength.Public-Key Cryptography
1988The Morris wormThe first large-scale network worm.Vulnerabilities & Attacks
1991PGPPublic-key encryption for individuals.Public-Key Cryptography
1992MD5Widely used, later found to collide.Hashes & Message Authentication
1994Shor's algorithmQuantum factoring and discrete logarithms.Post-Quantum Cryptography
1995SHA-1The basis of TLS and Git.Hashes & Message Authentication
1995SSL 2.0Netscape's security layer.TLS & Secure Transport
1999TLS 1.0Standardised by the IETF.TLS & Secure Transport
2004MD5 and SHA-1 collisionsAttacks by Wang Xiaoyun's team.Hashes & Message Authentication
2014HeartbleedA memory leak in OpenSSL.Vulnerabilities & Attacks
2015SHA-3Keccak is standardised.Hashes & Message Authentication
2015Let's EncryptFree certificates make HTTPS universal.TLS & Secure Transport
2016The NIST PQC competitionStandardisation begins.Post-Quantum Cryptography
2017WannaCryRansomware goes global.Vulnerabilities & Attacks
2018Spectre and MeltdownCPU side channels.Vulnerabilities & Attacks
2018TLS 1.3Faster handshakes and stronger defaults.TLS & Secure Transport
2021Log4ShellAn open-source supply-chain crisis.Vulnerabilities & Attacks
2022The first algorithms are chosenKyber, Dilithium and others.Post-Quantum Cryptography
2024The FIPS standards arriveML-KEM, ML-DSA and SLH-DSA.Post-Quantum Cryptography

Curriculum

Courses and labs

Which university courses this domain usually maps to, and whether the practical work is a standalone project course or an in-class lab.

In-class labs + a project

Labs are attack-and-defend ranges: you are given a vulnerable system, you break it, then you fix it.

Courses

Introduction to Information SecurityCryptographySystems Security (elective)

Open courses

  • MIT 6.858 Computer Systems Security
  • Berkeley CS 161 Computer Security

What the labs look like

  • SEED Labs

    More than thirty labs covering buffer overflows, SQL injection, TLS and DNS cache poisoning

  • CTF ranges

    DVWA, pwn.college, Hack The Box — advance level by level

  • Cryptography programming

    Implement AES, RSA and SHA-256 and compare byte for byte with the standard library