We admitted 50 students from nine institutions to the Summer 2026 Applied Cryptography online course. The course runs from June 9 through October 10 and is free of charge.
The course
Applied Cryptography has two parts and 18 topics. Part 1 covers provable security, pseudorandomness, chosen-plaintext and chosen-ciphertext security, hash functions, Diffie–Hellman, elliptic curves, and digital signatures. Part 2 covers TLS, RC4, secure messaging, end-to-end encrypted storage, high-assurance implementations, post-quantum cryptography, cryptocurrency cryptography, zero-knowledge proofs, secure multiparty computation, and fully homomorphic encryption.
Students complete eight problem sets and choose one or two of eight projects. The projects include a password manager, a secure messenger, a ProVerif model of a TLS-like protocol, a zero-knowledge Battleship game, a post-quantum migration, private set intersection for contact discovery, privacy-preserving age verification, and a time-locked message capsule. Implementation projects use Go or Rust, with starter kits provided for both.
The four-week seminar rotation covers paper reading, student presentations, technical writing, and careers in industry and academia.
The course website publishes the reading list, problem sets, project briefs, and other materials under a Creative Commons license. The required textbooks are Mike Rosulek’s The Joy of Cryptography and Jean-Philippe Aumasson’s Serious Cryptography, 2nd Edition.
Why the course is free
Specialized cryptography courses are not available to every computer-science student in Lebanon. This programme gives students from different Lebanese universities access to the same lectures, assignments, projects, and instructor feedback without charging tuition.
The cohort
The figures below summarize the admitted group.
Where they study
- Lebanese University23 · 46%
- American University of Beirut17 · 34%
- Non-Lebanese5 · 10%
- Saint-Joseph University2 · 4%
- Lebanese International U.1 · 2%
- Islamic University of Lebanon1 · 2%
- University of Balamand1 · 2%
The Lebanese University and AUB account for 40 of the 50 places. Five students enrolled outside Lebanon were admitted at the instructor’s discretion.
Gender
- Male34 · 68%
- Female16 · 32%
Sixteen of the 50 admitted students are women.
Selected experience
The chart records experience reported in the applications, including graduate study, cryptography projects, security competitions, publications, and formal verification.
Schedule
Lectures run Tuesdays and Thursdays from 11:00 to 12:30 Beirut time. Course materials remain available on the course website for anyone who wants to follow the syllabus independently.