4 stars not because the course is somehow bad, no! It's really good but... It's not for complete beginners: you'll need bits, bytes, some maths and computer science knowledge. Second: it's more theoretical than practical and you really have to learn definitions of some terms. Third: questions during the videos sometimes want an answer in TeX notation, but I never seen information about it! And programming tasks: you can't just copy and paste data you're working with. This is a problem. Despite that - a good course. Learned a lot of new things, crypto algorithms and schemes are well explained. Now thinking about Crypto II...

Good course, covers pretty interesting material. The level is quite high and technical though, so I wouldn't call it introductory - you definitely need a basis in CS/algebra and a basic understanding of computer security in general.

Quizzes and videos are good but the course could use a better emphasis on coding (the programming assignments provided very little guidance and there's essentially no code in the lectures - probably by design but that can leave you hanging if you're looking for a practical rather than purely theoretical understanding of the topic).

This class is hardly a beginners class and requires quite a bit more time than indicated. Especially if it has been 25 years since collage... Other reviews asked about an beginners course in Cryptography. I took Coursera's "Introduction to Applied Cryptography from University of London" before this one, which was helpful regarding concepts, nomenclature etc. That said I really enjoyed the problem solving required to pass the Quizzes. I appreciate that all of the material was easily downloaded from the very beginning and I learned a lot. Thank you.

Fast dialog made it so I had to watch the videos multiple times, copy of the discussion in text form helped.

The in the lesson questions, didn't know how to format the responses to make them work. Also when the session when to the question reply mode, it showed the question but covered up the graphic part of the question so you lost that context. Possible because I was full screen mode.

Well done all in all.

This course is great for people who already have a grip on discrete math. For others it may seem fast paced and unintuitive. But if you put in the work to understand the mathematical concepts from the ground up, this course can get easier. The instructor could have emphasized more on the intuition behind the concepts rather than symbolic representation. Overall a good course on introductory cryptography

A very good course. The pace is quite high and the material is challenging. I think to get the best out of it you need to spend considerably more time than the course suggests each week and I was not able to do this. However, I have come out of the course with a good understanding of the basic concepts of cryptography and my interest in the subject has been piqued sufficiently to want to find out more!

The teacher is really an expert on the topic and I learned a lot from the course. The only criticism I'd offer is that some of the lectures make it hard to see the forest from the trees early on -- e.g., a lot of information might be provided early on in a lecture and the point is not really clear till the end. That said, I'm glad to have taken it and am considering taking the next part.

I really enjoyed this course! Symetric security was quite easy for me. But when it came to public key security I felt so lost because of all that deep math. Maybe it may have better and more detailed explanation, but maybe it just my problem with math (which I'm aware and aknowledge even without this course :D).But definitely worth time spent. Waiting for Cryptography II now.

Thanks.

It would be really amazing if Dan tries to go lot more abstract in each video; and not explain the same concepts over and over again. I feel that it becomes particularly boring to keep hearing the recaps over and over again. In general, the course was a tough one for me! But the instructor, with his immense knowledge and great way of explaining things did create an impact!

I found the course far too difficult to be honest, it requires a lot of reading time to finish the quizes, and I had trouble completing it. That of course can also be perceived as agood thing for students who want to specialize on the subject.

I wanted this course to learn some basics of encryption for my research, but I felt a bit swamped.

"Completing this cryptography course has been an incredibly rewarding experience. It provided a solid foundation and deep insights into both theory and application, making complex concepts accessible and engaging. I feel well-equipped and inspired to apply these skills in real-world scenarios. Highly recommended!"

Excellent course. One of the most difficult ones I followed on Coursera. It's a bit dry due to the amount of math in such a short time and because it lacks a bit on the practical side of things. The optional coding assignments are good but I would have preferred a more practical approach for the course as a whole.

This course really a best course for cryptography basics and intermediate level. Only negative thing is that real-time approach of how to use crypto-libraries not explained here. So if anyone want to implement the cryptography standards to their product/design, need to refer other sites.

I liked the level commitment the programming problems demanded. It truly made you feel you had a deeper understanding of the subject after finishing them as opposed to just reading and answering multiple choice questions. Thanks for putting this together for the world to learn!

Some of the questions in the quizzes were vague and hard to comprehend. Also the professor's hand writing on the notes doesn't help since it's messy and the marker quality is not that good either.

Apart from the above, a good intro course to crypto, thanks.

A very good presentation of the theory of cryptography algorithms, but I'm disappointed that Crypto II is not available for now: some important points such as SSL/TLS crypto protocols or eliptic curves are not described at all in Crypto I.

The course is really what I wanted: It covers theoretical and practical aspect of cryptography. The exercises are also very well designed, although, I found some of them quite difficult.

Overall, I would recommend this course to a friend.

It was totally worthy for me for the amount of time I have invested in this course. Got to learn many aspects of Cryptography and also want to thank educator for giving his precious time to make me learn new concepts about Cryptography.

The course is very interesting and the topics are very well explained by the proffessor. I didn have a wide background about cryptography but still could learn a lot. Congrats!!. I would preffer more examples and not so much theory.

Great overview of cryptography! However I think it's a few years out of date (now in 2022), e.g. one code example is using Python 2 which is obsolete. It's quite math-heavy, which could be good or bad depending on what you like.

The content of the course is excellent. Sometime the excercises are a bit confusing because the losse of information in the content. Also is a little quick but I found it excellent to be an introduction to Cryptography.

Though the material is quite challenging, professor Boneh explains it quite clearly and at an easy pace in his lectures. I found it very interesting to learn more about encryption and how the current standards work.

I just want to say that this course is very good for people who know a lot of math and i mean it will be easy for them to grasp the course , so i strongly recommend to please explain concepts a little bit more .

An amazing course that provided me with important tools in cryptography. I hope I see more courses like this in the future and a special thank you to Professor Dan Boneh for teaching this course. Thank you.

A bit too hard actually, should be more focused on practical cryptography that teaches how to use cryptography in computer programming more efficiently, rather than theoretical cryptography.