Applied Cryptography: Free Online Course for 50 Lebanese University Students This Summer

The Applied Cryptography course that I teach at the American University of Beirut is coming back this summer as a free online program, open to 50 students at Lebanese universities nationwide.

This is a full-featured course with strong instructor-student engagement. The same lectures, the same problem sets, the same projects, the same rigor, delivered online over the summer to a small, selectively admitted cohort. If you are a university student in Lebanon and you want to learn modern cryptography properly, this is your application: apply here. The deadline is May 10, 2026. The course starts June 5, 2026.

What the Course Covers

Applied Cryptography is a two-part course. The first part builds the theoretical foundations: provable security, pseudorandomness, chosen-plaintext and chosen-ciphertext attacks, collision-resistant hash functions, the discrete logarithm problem, Diffie-Hellman, elliptic curves, and digital signatures. The second part applies those foundations to real-world systems: TLS, secure messaging (Signal, OTR, MLS), end-to-end encrypted cloud storage, post-quantum cryptography, zero-knowledge proofs, cryptocurrency cryptography, high-assurance implementations, and secure multiparty computation.

The course has 16 topics, 8 problem sets, and 8 hands-on projects (students choose one or two). Projects range from building a password manager to designing a secure messenger, formally verifying a TLS-like protocol in ProVerif, implementing a zero-knowledge battleship game, and migrating a system to post-quantum cryptography. The programming languages are Go and Rust.

The required textbooks are Mike Rosulek’s The Joy of Cryptography and Jean-Philippe Aumasson’s Serious Cryptography, 2nd Edition. There is also an extensive reading list of around 90 research papers and technical resources, all linked from the course website.

How It Works

The program runs entirely online:

• Lectures are both delivered live and also pre-recorded and published on YouTube. Watch them on your own schedule.
• Discussion, Q&A, and community happen on a dedicated Discord server.
• Problem sets and projects are submitted and graded through Google Classroom.

All course materials—slides, readings, problem sets, project specifications—are already publicly available on the course website under a Creative Commons license. The online program adds structured pacing, graded assignments, direct access to the instructor, and a cohort of peers to work with.

Who Should Apply

You must be currently enrolled at a qualifying Lebanese university. Undergraduate or graduate. We will select 50 students based on:

• Motivation. Why do you want to learn cryptography? What do you intend to do with it?
• Background. Familiarity with at least one programming language and basic mathematical maturity (discrete math, probability, or any proof-based coursework).
• Diversity. We want representation from across Lebanese universities and academic backgrounds, not just the usual suspects.

No prior cryptography experience is required. The course starts from first principles. If you have never seen a security reduction before, that is fine—you will by the end.

Certificate and Recommendation Letters

Students who complete the course will receive a signed certificate of completion. High-achieving students may be eligible for personalized letters of recommendation for graduate school applications.

Why We’re Doing This

Lebanon has a remarkable density of talented computer science students who, for various well-known reasons, do not always have access to specialized coursework in areas like cryptography. This is not a commentary on any university’s curriculum. It is an observation that the gap between what is taught in a standard undergraduate CS program and what is needed to do serious work in cryptography—whether in research, industry, or open-source—is large, and that closing it should not depend on which university you happened to enroll in or whether you can afford a semester abroad.

This course exists because I believe applied cryptography education should be accessible to any motivated student in Lebanon who wants it. The course materials are already open. The lectures will be open. The only scarce resource is structured mentorship and graded feedback, and we are making that available to 50 students this summer at no cost.

Looking for TAs

My students from last semester – in case you’re reading this, get in touch. There’s no way I’m grading fifty students on my lonesome again! I need your help!

Apply

The application is short. Tell us who you are, where you study, why you want to take this course, and what background you bring. That’s it.

Apply now!