4 posts tagged with "encryption"

This is the final section of my series on encryption... at least for now. Maybe I'll think of some other topics to cover.

You can clone my encryption demo repo and run the code from this article on your own machine.

Intro to hashing​

Hashing is a one way function that's used in encryption scenarios where the goal is secure storage, data integrity, and verification. The original use that led to the creation of hashing functions was digital signatures. It's basically a function that creates a summary of the whole, but the whole cannot be extrapolated from the hash.

RSA Encryption overview​

RSA was invented by NORAD in the early 1970's but was deemed top secret. A few years later in 1977, Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir and Leonard Adleman independantly invented the exact same process for encryption and called it RSA. RSA is the most used software in the world to date and every internet user has used RSA at some point whether they knew it or not.

History​

The most advanced method of encryption during WWII (the enigma machine) was broken by a guy who built a computer (Alan Turing).

In the decades following WWII the US was in a cold war with the USSR. Computers were being built in order to gain intelligence and monitor what the Soviets were doing. NORAD (part of the US and Canada's military complex) created the first networked computer system and they wanted secure communication so that no bad actors could eavesdrop on secret military communication.

Intro​

This will be a series on Encryption.

It was my turn to give presentation to my work colleagues at our weekly meetings. Instead of talking about the usual webdev / JavaScript / Framework of the week, I spoke about the fundamentals of cryptography (it made me nostalgic for grad school). I think it's good and important to have an understanding of the basics of how our wonderful internet operates.

This will be split up into several posts. This first one is just an introduction on the topic.