Description
Symmetric and asymmetric encryption, digital signatures, and hash functions form
the well-established foundation of almost all security-critical systems. Beyond them,
a growing family of exotic primitives solves problems classical cryptography cannot
handle in practice: computing on encrypted data, signing anonymously, or compressing
thousands of signatures into one. Several are already deployed in production systems
such as Zcash, Ethereum, and WhatsApp, yet no unified, accessible reference covers
their capabilities, security properties, and deployment readiness.
This thesis builds that reference: a structured catalog of 13 exotic primitives across
four sections. The first three each extend a classical capability, confidentiality, authentication,
and integrity, while the fourth presents two cautionary examples that fail in
practice, one by design, the other by lack of adoption. Primitives were selected by a
systematic snowballing literature review from four canonical reference works, ranging
from production-deployed to research-stage constructions.
The catalog targets readers without prior cryptographic expertise. Each entry follows
a consistent seven-part template, from an everyday analogy and protocol diagram
through a step-by-step walkthrough to a practitioner-oriented assessment of performance,
deployment, and post-quantum status, with the cautionary examples closing on
why the primitive fails. Every entry opens with an eight-dimensional classification, and
a consolidated table sets all entries side by side. Difficulty rises gradually within each
entry: newcomers start with the analogy, experts go straight to the formal definition.
The result lets a non-specialist judge whether an exotic primitive fits a problem and
how mature it is for deployment.
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