natnitaract/exams-basic-and-quantum-cryptography-and-security-latex

Open Problem Exams: Cryptography and Security (LaTeX)

A curated dataset of open-ended exam problems (with solutions) in cryptography and computer security, formatted in LaTeX. The dataset is sourced from university courses at three institutions.

Dataset Overview

Institution	Files	Topics	Questions
Caltech & TU Delft	8	38	145
EPFL	6	19	86
ETH Zurich	1	14	37
MIT	3	33	79
Total	18	104	347

Difficulty Distribution

Institution	Easy	Medium	Hard	Total
Caltech & TU Delft	28	82	35	145
EPFL	16	45	25	86
ETH Zurich	0	18	19	37
MIT	11	65	3	79
Total	55	210	82	347

Problem Type Distribution

Type	Count
Proof	107
Mixed	97
Explanation	88
Computation	37
Construction	18

Subject Coverage

• Caltech & TU Delft — Quantum cryptography and quantum information theory: BB84, quantum money, entanglement, CHSH game, secret sharing, semidefinite programming, state discrimination, teleportation, superdense coding, decoherence.
• EPFL — Classical cryptography and cryptanalysis: DES/3DES attacks, PKCS#1 signature attacks, hash collisions, MACs, Pedersen commitments, ECDSA, DSA, hard disk encryption, EKE protocols.
• ETH Zurich — Cryptographic protocols: zero-knowledge proofs, interactive proofs, commitment schemes, oblivious transfer, secure multi-party computation, secret sharing, Byzantine agreement, player elimination.
• MIT — Broad computer security: encryption schemes, authentication, isolation, symbolic execution, browser security, timing attacks, TLS, collision resistance, public-key encryption, differential privacy, software security, privilege separation.

Data Format

Each JSON file contains an array of problem sets. Every problem set follows this schema:

{
    "topic": "Problem title",
    "level": "graduate",
    "describe": "Problem description and context (LaTeX)",
    "tags": ["POVM", "state-discrimination", "quantum-measurement"],
    "source": {
        "institution": "Caltech & TU Delft",
        "course": "CS/Ph 120 — Quantum Cryptography",
        "license": "Academic use — original course materials",
        "url": "https://..."
    },
    "questions": [
        {
            "question": "Question text (LaTeX)",
            "solution": "Solution/answer (LaTeX)",
            "difficulty": "hard",
            "problem_type": "proof",
            "prerequisite_knowledge": ["linear algebra", "density matrices", "POVM"],
            "tags": ["pretty-good-measurement", "POVM"]
        }
    ],
    "date": "DD.MM.YYYY",
    "author": "Author name(s)",
    "license": "Institution name"
}

All mathematical notation is written in LaTeX.

Field Reference

Field	Level	Values	Description
level	topic	undergraduate · graduate	Academic level of the course
tags	topic	list of strings	Subtopic keywords for filtering
source	topic	object	Institution, course, license, URL
difficulty	question	easy · medium · hard	Estimated question difficulty
problem_type	question	proof · computation · true_false · explanation · construction · mixed	Nature of the question
prerequisite_knowledge	question	list of strings	Concepts needed to solve the question
tags	question	list of strings	Specific subtopic tags

Labels were assigned automatically via rule-based heuristics and may need manual review for edge cases.

Directory Structure

data/
├── caltech/          # Quantum cryptography (Caltech CS/Ph 120 & TU Delft)
├── epfl/             # Cryptography and security (COM-401)
├── eth_zurich/       # Cryptographic protocols (SS 2021)
└── mit/
    └── basic/        # Computer security (6.858 / 6.1600)

License

BSD 3-Clause — see individual file license fields for per-source attribution.

Citation

@misc{natnitaract2026openexamscrypto,
  author    = {natnitaract},
  title     = {Open Problem Exams: Cryptography and Security (LaTeX)},
  year      = {2026},
  publisher = {Hugging Face},
  url       = {https://huggingface.co/datasets/natnitaract/open-problem-exams-cryptography-and-security-latex}
}