What is Cryptography? A Complete Overview

Sep 08, 2021 by Lane Wagner

What is cryptography? Simply put, Cryptography provides a method for secure communication. It stops unauthorized parties, commonly referred to as adversaries or hackers, from gaining access to the secret messages communicated between authorized parties. The method that cryptography provides is called encryption. Encryption transforms a key and input, the plaintext, into an encrypted output, the ciphertext. Encryption algorithms are only considered secure if attackers cannot determine any properties of the plaintext or the key when presented with only the ciphertext.

Intro to the One-Time Pad Cipher

Jun 28, 2021 by Lane Wagner

In cryptography, the one-time pad, or OTP is a way of encrypting information so securely that it’s impossible to be cracked. That said, OTP has a major drawback in that it requires both parties to have access to the same key before a message is encrypted. How the one-time pad cipher works When using the one-time pad, a message and a secret key are required to start. Each bit of the original message, assuming we can use binary data, is encrypted by using an XOR operation on it and the corresponding bit from the secret key.

What Is Entropy In Cryptography?

Sep 28, 2020 by Lane Wagner

If you’re familiar with the laws of thermodynamics, you may recognize the second law as the one that deals with entropy. In the realm of physics, entropy represents the degree of disorder in a system. Because systems tend to degrade over time, thermodynamic energy becomes less available to do mechanical work. In cryptography, entropy has a distinct but similar meaning. In cryptography, entropy refers to the randomness collected by a system for use in algorithms that require random data.

Elliptic Curve Cryptography: A Basic Introduction

Sep 17, 2020 by Lane Wagner

Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) is a modern public-key encryption technique famous for being smaller, faster, and more efficient than incumbents. Bitcoin, for example, uses ECC as its asymmetric cryptosystem because it is so lightweight. The mathematical entity that makes all of this possible is the elliptic curve, so read on to learn how these curves enable some of the most advanced cryptography in the world. What is elliptic curve cryptography used for?

Is AES-256 Quantum Resistant?

Sep 10, 2020 by Lane Wagner

With quantum computers getting more powerful each year, many worry about the safety of modern encryption standards. As quantum computers improve in performance and the number of qubits used for calculations increases, current cryptosystems are under threat. AES-256 is one of the most powerful symmetric ciphers, but will it remain secure in a post-quantum world? What will break post-quantum? Many asymmetric encryption algorithms have been mathematically proven to be broken by quantum computers using Shor’s algorithm.

Bcrypt Step by Step

Aug 24, 2020 by Lane Wagner

Bcrypt is a key derivation function, which can be thought of as a special kind of hash function. Its purpose is to slowly convert a piece of input data to a fixed-size, deterministic, and unpredictable output. A common use case is to convert a password into an n-bit cryptographic key, which can then be used for safe authentication. What does a Bcrypt hash look like? Using Bcrypt on the password myPassword123 would produce something like the following:

(Very) Basic Intro to Lattices in Cryptography

Aug 21, 2020 by Lane Wagner

Lattice-based cryptography, an important contender in the race for quantum-safe encryption, describes constructions of cryptographic primitives that involve mathematical lattices. Lattices, as they relate to crypto, have been coming into the spotlight recently. In January 2019, Many of the semifinalists in the NIST post-quantum-cryptography competition were based on lattices. Lattice-based cryptography has promising aspects that give us hope for cryptographic security in a post-quantum world. What is a Lattice? According to Wikipedia, a lattice is the set of all integer linear combinations of basis vectors:

Shamir’s Secret Sharing Step-By-Step

Aug 18, 2020 by Lane Wagner

Adi Shamir’s Secret Sharing is a cryptographic algorithm that allows distinct parties to jointly share ownership of a single secret by holding shares. The original secret can only be reconstructed by using a minimum number of shares, which allows different parties to cooperate without the need to fully trust one another. Example Problem To illustrate, let’s imagine that a family of four all share a single Bitcoin wallet. This Bitcoin wallet contains a single private key that all members of the family co-own.

HMAC and MACs - The Inner Workings of JWTs

Aug 05, 2020 by Lane Wagner

HMACs and MACs are authentication codes and are often the backbone of JWT authentication systems. A Message Authentication Code (MAC) is a string of bits that depends on a secret key and is sent with a message to prove the message wasn’t tampered with. HMACs are a more strict version of MACs that offer additional security benefits. MAC - Message Authentication Code MACs are exactly what they sound like; small codes that allow receivers of messages to know who the sender was (authentication).

(Very) Basic Intro to PGP (GPG)

Jul 27, 2020 by Lane Wagner

PGP, or its open-source alternative, GPG, is a program used to encrypt data such that only an authorized party can decrypt it. In this introduction, we will cover its use-cases and a high-level overview of the algorithms involved. Both programs (and others) adhere to the OpenPGP protocol. Because it is an implementation agnostic protocol, people can use the software they are most comfortable with and still send secure messages to each other.