Security - Pg. 2

Cryptology vs Cryptography - Definitions and Differences

Dec 16, 2019 by Lane Wagner

Many new developers are jumping right into writing code, usually for those fat paychecks, without learning much about the history of Computer Science. Alan Turing is recognized as the father of Computer Science, though many don’t know that his roots were in cryptology and mathematics. It was out of cryptology, cryptography, and mathematics that computer science was born.

How to Secure Your Bitcoin

Aug 30, 2019 by Lane Wagner

If you’re new to Bitcoin and cryptocurrency, you may have heard the common phrase not your keys not your coins. While self-custody isn’t for everyone, it’s the only way to truly have exclusive control over your funds. If that’s what you’re into, read on.

Security in Dependencies

Aug 21, 2019 by Lane Wagner

Choosing the right dependencies is a difficult task. Assuming the developer of an application is the best programmer in the world, the “best” thing to do would be to write the entire codebase alone. This would eliminate the bugs, vulnerabilities, and malicious intrusions of inferior developers.

Encoding vs Encryption - They Aren't the Same

Aug 14, 2019 by Lane Wagner

While encryption does involve various methods of encoding data, the two are absolutely not interchangeable. In fact, if you get them mixed up it can result in serious data breaches and security vulnerabilities.

Creating and Remembering a Strong Passphrase

Aug 03, 2019 by Lane Wagner

We all have hundreds of online accounts. Ideally, as many of those accounts as possible have unique passwords. Unique passwords however present a difficult problem.

BIP 32 Watch-Only Wallets

Jul 25, 2019 by Lane Wagner

Bitcoin improvement proposal 32 is, in my opinion, one of the most important BIPs we have. (Thanks Peter Wuille!) BIP 32 gave us Hierarchical Deterministic Wallets, which grant the ability to create a tree of keys from a single seed.

Trustworthy vs Trustless Apps

Jul 23, 2019 by Lane Wagner

In the wake of the hearings about Facebook’s new Libra blockchain, it is more important than ever that we all understand the difference between trustworthy and trustless apps.

Secure Random Numbers in Node.js

Jul 03, 2019 by Lane Wagner

Quick answer: use crypto.randomBytes() for cryptographically secure randomness in Node.js. const { randomBytes } = await import("node:crypto"); const buf = randomBytes(256); console.log(`${buf.length} bytes of random data: ${buf.toString("hex")}`); crypto.randomBytes() is a cryptographically secure random number generator based on openssl. Depending on the operating system of the user, randomBytes will use /dev/urandom (Unix) or CryptoGenRandom (Windows).