It is very nice to have some basic idea. But if supplemented with some practical based screen recording then may be that would be more interesting. If supplemented with reference to further reading materials for deeper understanding then that ware better.

El profesor es muy malo explicando, hay cosas las cuales no tenian sentido (creo yo que esto es porque justamente el profesor no sabe y explicar) y ademas las preguntas que hace en medio de los videos son ridiculas. Da preguntas sin haber antes explicado el conocimiento previo.

A really hard class for anyone not graduated from collage.

Should have come with an explanation that non IT background people cannot apply

This course does an excellent job of explaining the fundamentals of cryptography and showing real-life applications built on these constructions. Moreover, it provides the student with useful abstractions and frameworks for evaluating the security of cryptographic constructions. What I really enjoyed about this course was getting my hands dirty with some of the programming exercises. Each week has a programming exercise, some of which give you an opportunity to leverage well-known vulnerabilities to mount attacks on various cryptographic constructions.

I gained a deep appreciation for the science, as well as the art, of cryptography from this course. I'm excited to learn more in the second course this fall to expand upon the concepts introduced in this course.

One thing that I think is worth mentioning, however, is that you should really expect this course to take up around 10-15 hours of your time per week (depending on your commitment and speed with completing the programming exercises). The course material is very dense, and there are some mathematical concepts later in the course that may take you some time to wrap your head around if you are unfamiliar with or haven't had recent exposure to them. I say this because Coursera provides its own estimates for each part of the course (lecture, quiz, programming exercise), but you should know that these are completely inaccurate. The lecture videos are rich with content and move very quickly, so you will need to pause them frequently to catch up on notes and absorb the concepts.

This is a fabulous course. Professor Boneh did an admirable job teaching the basics of modern Cryptography. Modern Cryptography was born at Stanford University founded by Martin Hellman and two students. It used at first intuitive ideas linking complexity theory to cryptography. The old cryptography, that is cryptography at around the Second World War was a a rigorous theory based on Information Theory and founded by Claude Shannon. Modern cryptography was based on the idea that if a cryptographic system cannot be broken in billions of years, then it is for all practical purposes just as secure as a theoretically unbreakable system. In the last 30 years or so the proper definitions were found to make this intuitive idea precise, making modern cryptography a rigorous science. Professor Boneh presents this rigorous theory in this course.

The course is very interesting and very challenging,

As an firmware engineer who never had the chance to learn Crypto. the course gave me a grate introduction to this field.

It is very fascinating to understand the different Crypto. methods and their vulnerabilities, and it made me more aware and gave me the ability to evaluate strength of Crypto. systems that I encounter.

Before every topic there were a detailed overview on the Math theory required to learn it, the explanations followed by real life examples and it feels like the team put a lot of effort to make the lectures comfortable and easy to follow.

The Homework are challenging and very help-hull to understand the learned topics.

Outstanding coverage, very fast paced.

I enrolled in this course to gain an understanding of cryptography beyond material designed for the consumption of the non-technical audience. The lectures by Prof. Boheh were very clear and well organized, with emphasis on fundamental definitions. The section on basic number theory was most helpful. While taking the course, I was also learning the Python programming language, so I attempted most of the optional programming assignments in Python. This reinforced the material a great deal. I will recomment this course highly and will definitely enroll in Cryptography II when it becomes available.

Thank you for a great learning experience.

Amazing course! Enjoyed it so much! Many thanks to Professor Dan Boneh.

Although the lectures are quite short they contain a lot of useful information. You might want to watch them more then once!

The quizzes are designed in such a way that you have to understand the material in order to pass them - just memorizing won't be enough. That's a sign of high quality.

Don't skip the practice quizzes - they are challenging, thought-provoking and help you understand the topic much better.

Bear in mind that the course requires certain math background in discrete probability and number theory. You'll find some books recommended to fill in the gaps at the beginning of the course.

That was the hardest thing i've ever learned in my whole life, but I'm well satisfied by this course. Thank's to this course I finally understood the way I have to use crypto without risk of being hacked because of simple mistake I made. I also wanna say THANK YOU SO MUCH! to professor Dan Boneh for the best possible explanation of the course's material and THANK YOU SO MUCH! to Coursera for giving me an opportunity to learn this high quality educational material while being in the middle of nowhere. Sometimes there were a tiny problems with sound, but it's not critical. Anyway, it's much better then the education that I could get in my region.

Very interesting and intense course, covers probably more than twice as much material as some other courses in the same time. The lecturer Dan Boneh is very motivated and very competent. It makes a significant difference listening to someone who is an expert than just reading a book about it. That said, having a textbook in addition to the videos is a great help, as it gives you a different perspective, which helps a lot with understanding. The questions and programming exercises are interesting and challenging (unfortunately I did not have the time to do the coding exercises), though some of the questions could be formulated a bit clearer.

Very good introduction for someone who wants to understand cryptography at a level deeper than "This is the Crypto API". After the course it is not only clear "what to (not) do" but also "why". Some mathematical understanding is required (I'd say university entry level).

The pace is just right. The questions dispersed throughout the lectures really help the process of understanding because they force to think about the problem at hand. Also very good is that each session starts with a short summary of the last session. Very helpful, if you watch this course in the evening after a workday.

Really good course. The professor knows what he is talking about and he explains as easy to understand as possible. As engineer it was sometimes difficult but not impossible for me to understand everything right away.

The only thing in my opinion that could make the course way more understandable are step by step examples with real numbers/text/messages. The examples in the course are good but too general to understand without a strong mathematical background.

I would recommend this course and I would say it is one of the best cryptography courses you'll find in internet.

Greetings!

One of the best courses I had so far. This course requires patience, a lot of thinking. It rewards you with great learning experience. This course encouraged me to go further into details of cryptography. I will still be reviewing my notes and what I learned from this course in coming months and enroll to the second course from Prof. Boneh. It definitely worth it. I also strongly recommend investing some more time into number theory (at least first four chapters of Viktor Shoup's book) to feel good about the theory of public key cryptography.

I had to review college algebra and some of the prerequisite, optional material to get by. I found myself thinking I understood until I got to the quiz. There are a lot of spaces where he assumes you know things or that you will figure out that a+b=c (like putting 2 and 2 together). Notes should probably be taken in outline format. After watching a couple weeks you can tell how he organizes it. The teacher is very knowledgeable and explains concepts very well. The material can still be incredibly hard and gets easier as you repeat it.

Extremely useful course that allowed me to get into computer security without any SUBJECT-SPECIFIC knowledge. Background in mathematics and programming definitely required to successfully complete the course, but if you have it, you can easily grasp concepts and constructions defining fundamental building blocks of modern computer security. I really hope that advanced course will land sometime, or at least extension of this one covering topics digital signatures, authenticated key-exchange and other good stuff.

Clearly structured, well explained first course on the subject.

At times it appears too thin as mathematical proofs are not detailed, but as the course goes on, references to further readings are included which allows a more advanced understanding of the subject ( in maths and computing). This allows for a rather large range of topics to be introduced. Well done and last but not least, thank you so much, Dan !

Note: The pace of the course is also flexible. This course is perfectly doable ( on top of any job).

Great course, thank you!

This is a great introduction to Cryptography. Before this course, I was a complete beginner and now I am reasonably comfortable with the basics. I am definitely planning to take Cryptography II sometime in the near future.

One comment - working full time and taking this class was not easy. For future classes, it might be easier if you make each week less packed, possibly even splitting each week into 2 weeks. This would make it easier to keep up with the schedule.

This is a fantastic introduction to the world of cryptography! You learn about the basic concepts of encryption, authentication, authenticated encryption, public and private keys and the underlying mathematical principles that (should) make it hard to break the ciphers! You also learn about historical developments, real world applications and current challenges that would bring you instant fame in the crypto world. Also it is not a disadvantage if you really love solving puzzles!

I'm the Technical Director of an electronic company. I didn't know very much (certainly not enough) about cryptography, except some vague general information. My company needed to gain first hand knowledge to protect a new line of products, for which online reprogramming will be necessary. This crash course about cryptography has been extremely enlightening, to address the development of these procedures.

Thank you Dan for your good work and carry on with it.

Este curso, ministrado pelo grande professor Dan Boneh, é maravilhoso, para dizer o mínimo. Mostra a teoria didaticamente, de forma a facilitar a matemática do assunto que é bem árida, mas também introduz aspectos práticos importantes para quem milita na área em particular com especificação e desenvolvimento de software. Os exames, para além de simples avaliação do aprendizado, foram ótimas ferramentas para fixar e melhorar o entendimento do conteúdo.

Прекрасно структурированный курс. Практические задания (optional), потребовавшие большого количества времени (почти ничего не доделал до конца, но заниматься было интересно, возможно, займусь позже). Тесты строго по лекциям. В целом, всё понятно.

Иногда языковой барьер слегка мешает (термины запоминаются не с первого раза, приходится пересматривать - названия атак и т.п.). В 1 неделе есть презентации с лекций, по ним проще искать материал.

I learned a tremendous amount from this course and it provided the grounding for an array of different areas of infosec studies I am pursuing. I highly recommend it. Many of the ideas were easy and intuitive to grasp, but there is also enough depth that I will likely take the course again at a later date.

The quizzes and projects were thoughtful and challenging, and effectively tested that the student understands the key ideas of material.

The course was authentically cryptic. Just kidding. Once I listened to Prof. Boneh a few time over, I started to get the idea. asymptotic security while never stated as such played a fundamental role in the security proofs. Professor Boneh augmented the notion of correctness to include immunity from side channel (Power and timing attacks). The course was a great medley of pragmatic advice and theory. I am grateful for this class.

Learning Cryptograpy is not a walk in the park as it requires a good understanding of the theoretical foundations and it is so easy to get wrong, yet it is essential for an IT professional to get a good grasp of the subject. This course is invaluable in that respect, the instructor presents the material in a clear, concise fashion without overwhelming with the math involved, giving the overview you need as a professional.