<div dir="ltr">Hello Fellow HACers, As you may recall from our last meeting, a group of us got together to design a syllabus for a proposed “International Masters Degree in Crypto-Programming”. The modules we came up with were <ul> <li> Crypto (symmetric) </li><li> Crypto (Asymmetric) </li><li> Architecture and Embedded Programming </li><li> Network Security </li><li> Crypto Programming </li><li> Side Channel attacks/defences </li><li> Protocols and Standards </li><li> Secure Programming </li><li> Formal Methods, Verification and Testing </li><li> Crypto law and Ethics</li></ul> There was also to be a final “Practicum”/Mini-Thesis component. None of this was finalized or set in stone, not even the name of the degree. We can as a group advance this project in a number of ways. Most obviously, if the above list of modules is acceptable as a starting point, then there is a need to flesh out each module in much more detail. To briefly recap on the motivation: If our aim is to encourage the development of High Assurance Crypto Software, then education needs to be a big part of that. We can all point to horror stories about poor quality crypto code. However a lot of that, I would suggest, is down to an educational deficit, rather than just reckless incompetence. A lot of real-world crypto code is being written by otherwise competent software engineers who are unfortunately blissfully unaware of the “tricks of the trade”. Many will have done a course in cryptology, but most likely only at the undergraduate level. There are a host of cyber-security master’s degrees out there, but most don’t cover the kind of stuff that a crypto programmer needs to know. Mike Scott </div>