This course was enjoyable and challenging. Early lessons cover historical ciphers, along with some fun programming challenges to attack them.

Later lessons dive into modern cryptography. This is more challenging and you will need to study some number theory if you have not done so previously. I ended up buying Prof Katz' book and also Concrete Mathematics to fully get my head around the subject matter. The treatment is not superficial.

This is where I dropped one star from the review - I thought that the course could have done a better job of covering the theory in this space, or at least pointing to sources to study it, or mentioning it as a pre-requisite.

I also thought that the course could have done a better job of describing how all the pieces come together - the discussion is there, but it is light and somewhat assumed you will get it. The only thorough discussion is specifically for SSL / TLS late in the lecture series.

Overall, a good and challenging course. This is not an easy MOOC - so only take it if you are interested in a challenge and don't mind extra study time.

It is good but I have to do extensive research of what is being thought and I have to study your book like Introduction to Modern Cryptography and attend other Cryptography online courses, only them I am able to understand this course. If more examples and solved problems will be provided then it will be very helpful. Samples programs are very good and able to solve. Thank you.

I needed an introduction course for cryptography.

finding coursera was amazing, registering and participating in this course was just what I was looking for.

Explanations and examples are clear and understood.

Keeping the pace for 7 weeks was a straggle worth paying !!

Thanks for the effort invested to bring it public, will surly participate in more classes.

Course provides practical understanding for cryptographic primitives without delving too deeply into the maths. I found the accompanying book (optional) to be of great value in enhancing the depth of material. Would have been helpful to spend a bit more time on SSL/TLS to solidify the knowledge.

Pretty nice course, on par with the more popular Coursera course Cryptography I by Dan Boneh - more of an introductory course for applied cryptography while Cryptography I is somewhat more theoretical. Useful introduction to DH and RSA. Purely optional programming assignments - .

Love the logic teaching part of the course, but the practical... All my life I have struggñe with math, so this course was particularly difficult for me. The good thing is, I'll dive more about cryptography since I barely understand the math part. But overall, is a great course.

Great course. I learned a lot. It won't go deep enough for you to be able to implement the algorithms yourself, but it will give you a good understanding of how cryptography works. I realize it does not require a great deal of math, but it helps to have a mathematical mindset.

Nice course! The private-key schemes part was especially well structured. I would consider plus one or two weeks to have more time for public-key part too. This way the practical implications of public key cryptography, like the lecture on SSL, could be more detailed as well.

I learned a lot in this course. I really appreciated. What I miss in several parts of the course is more examples. There are only a few examples in each lesson and with more examples it would be much easier.

Interesting course, the math was certainly complex. I would have liked to know a little more on how the equation itself worked.

Also more hands on work is also nice and paints a more clear picture.

Thanks

Awesome course those who wants to learn more thing about cryptography should go for it.

I really appreciate work done by Prof. Jonathan Katz.

Thanks Jonathan Katz for sharing your valuable knowledge.

There are too much materials for each week for a Hong Kong secondary school (middle school) student. The speed can be adjusted to a slower one, so as to allow more people to catch up the course.

Good course, but can get very deep at times, especially near the middle of the course.

The first 2 weeks are rather simple, week 3 is okay, 4 and 5 are very detailed, and 6 and 7 are easier.

This course was well organized with all the crypto topics that cover the basic need for upcoming sections. I am feeling great by doing this course thank you professor Jonathan Katz.

Very interesting, but a bit too theorical : it would be cool to see more practical case, and the internal mechanisms of a standard encryption scheme like AES.

The course is an excellent one for those who want to learn cyber security. Concepts are explained really well although it requires a higher mathematics.

Thanks a lot to our professor but I think we need to know more about the prerequisites of this course and more examples wit numbers and answers

Nice teacher, but the course is tough for those who didn't know ABC of cryptography

PDF slides would have been appreciated. The course is good, contents are good.

It will be helpful to clear your cryptography concept and tnx to coursera

very nice course material, just it was stuffed with too much statistics

A pretty dry topic, but the teacher manages to keep the interest up!

Hard, and fascinating. I wish I had Prof Katz when I was a student!

The course is very good, it covers from basics to all adv models

Complicated course that requires lots of mathematic background