This book contains 23 contributions presented at the "International Conference on Coding Theory, Cryptography and Related Areas (ICCC)", held in Guanajuato, Mexico, in April 1998. It comprises a series of research papers on various aspects of coding theory (geometric-algebraic, decoding, exponential sums, etc.) and cryptography (discrete logarithm problem, public key cryptosystems, primitives, etc.), as well as in other research areas, such as codes over finite rings and some aspects of function fields and algebraic geometry over finite fields. The book contains new results on the subject, never published in any other form. It will be useful to students, researchers, professionals, and tutors interested in this area of research.