cryptography anyone?

[DrJones]

Kind of related to that other thread of mine... but is anyone interested in this? I have been looking a lot into it in the past year or so, and learned a ton. It's a really interesting subject with a lot of real world implications. It's why you can feel safe sending your credit card number online.

Is anyone curious in hearing why/how it works? I could probably explain it to the point where most people would understand. I'm not going to waste all those keystrokes though unless people are interested (like I might of with that other thread :D). I can also elaborate on general security issues or how it relates to passwords or what people are interested in.

I like teaching people stuff they want to learn, and there is no better way to check and see how well you know something, than to try and explain it to someone else.

Anyone interested in having a discussion on it?

[boostin13b]

I dig crypto and have enjoyed books about historical crypto, fiction too. One that comes to mind is Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson. Was a great book imo.

Had a friend who was a codebreaker for the army sounded like a mind-numbing job.

-Mike

[cherrybombcivic]

id like to hear about it.....

stroke away....

*er* on the keyboard that is...

[-=[Juztin]=-]

Cryptography is definately an awsome subject. We should develope some crypto routines somtime DrJones :D . It's amazing how many different ways there are to hide something, whether it be through the pixels value's in a digital image, or simply re-arranging values.

[DrJones]

=-']Cryptography is definately an awsome subject. We should develope some crypto routines somtime DrJones :D . It's amazing how many different ways there are to hide something, whether it be through the pixels value's in a digital image, or simply re-arranging values.

Very true... it's also amazing the lengths people will go to try and circumvent it.

It is really interesting though. I put togeather a quick little program using openSSL that tries to factor RSA-640. Of course I figured I'd have no chance in hell actually trying do it the real way, so my program is more of a lotto type thing... it doesn't iterativly go down the list (like other people working on the same thing, who have had an earlier start, and more cpu power). It just kind of randomly picks numbers and tries to factor them. It takes a while, but who knows... because it chooses randomly there is a chance (very very small) that it might actually pick the right one.

It was kind of interesting looking at that fairly in depth and seeing how to do it. Even though it won't find the answer, it's still kind of fun knowing it could.

The kind of cryptography I like, is the kind where you can make your methods completly known, and people still can't easily break it. It's not like, "ohh we just shift the bits and do an xor", where that must be kept secret, but more of a "hey heres exactly how it works, good luck figuring it out" kind of thing.