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So lucky to live in a time where lectures are so freely available and accessible. Thank you for sharing.

Does anybody know what is the math background required for this course? Or do I need to go through the videos to find out?

According to an older ocw version of this course [1], you need "General ease with algorithms, elementary number theory and discrete probability". You can learn these from MIT's own ocw's excellent "Mathematics for Computer Science" [2] and "Introduction to Algorithms" [3].

For a gentler intro to crypto, I am planning to do Cristof Paar's course first, given that he takes his time to carefully explain all the math; there is a youtube list with all the lectures [4] and a course webpage [5]. In case any further encouragement is needed, according to a blog posting "Matasano Crypto Challenges, Set 5" [6]: "This set was surprisingly easy, actually. The book Understanding Cryptography by Paar & Pelzl is an excellent intro to the basic maths needed for crypto — namely, the group theory and number theory necessary for RSA and Diffie-Hellman."

Now that I am at it, here are some HN links you may find helpful if planning to learn crypto, in no particular order:

Rolling Your Own Crypto (DON'T!) [7]

Telegram’s Cryptanalysis Contest [8]

The most dangerous code in the world [9]

BearSSL – Smaller SSL/TLS [10]

NaCl: DJB’s new crypto library [11]

JavaScript Cryptography Considered Harmful [12]

Cryptographic Right Answers [13]

Ask HN: Current Crypto Best Practices [14]

Mathematical Cryptology [15]

Ask HN: What are the best books for learning information security? [16]

Of course, there are also the courses Bohne's CS255, Rivest's 6.857 and many others, and the books Cryptography Engineering, Introduction to Modern Cryptography etc ... Harvard's [pdf] https://people.seas.harvard.edu/~salil/cs127/fall13/conclusi... is a good guide.

Good times for learning!

[1] https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-compu...

[2] https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-compu...

[3] https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-compu...

[4] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2jrku-ebl3H50FiEPr4e...

[5] http://www.crypto-textbook.com/

[6] https://raywang.tech/2017/04/21/set5-writeup/

[7] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13221923

[8] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6940665

[9] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4695350

[10] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12863699

[11] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=704689