8 weeks Crypto write up

After planing for 12 weeks onto Crypto, I’ve tried to read the book, but without luck: I don’t understand things quite clear, if not nothing at all. And then I found this course by Christof Paar, in companion with his book: Understanding Cryptography. The course & the book are just brilliant!

It’s very easy to understand hard concepts which are explained by the professor. The course includes 24 videos, one for each week of study, but I finish it within 8 weeks. It’s extremely intense and I can’t say my brain takes it all, but I’ve learned so much, some are:

• Symmetric cipher: DES, AES

• Three families of asymmetric cryptography: integer factorization (RSA), discrete log (DH, Elgamal) & elliptic curves (ECDH)

• Digital signatures & Hash functions

I’ve done some of the problems using Go. I’ve left out many problems which are related to calculating the time neccessary to brute-force a cipher, and some more. That is something I am lack of, basic knowledge about Operating System. It’s not just what parts the computer is built from, it’s about how it really works.

So I guess it’s 12 weeks more, to dig down in Operating System.

See you then :)