Foundations of Cryptography – A Primer

Revolutionary developments which took place in the 1980's have transformed cryptography from a semi-scientific discipline to a respectable field in theoretical Computer Science. In particular, concepts such as computational indistinguishability, pseudorandomness and zero-knowledge interactive proofs were introduced and classical notions as secure encryption and unforgeable signatures were placed on sound grounds. The resulting field of cryptography, reviewed in this survey, is strongly linked to complexity theory (in contrast to “classical” cryptography which is strongly related to information theory).