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Shorts posts for your enjoyment.

  • Programming Zero Knowledge Proofs

    Cryptography Blogs

    From Zero to Hero is a great tutorial about zero knowledge proofs following their initial post, A Friendly Introduction to Zero Knowledge. Save this link for your next rainy day.

  • Cryptographic Right Answers

    Cryptography Blogs

    In 2018, Latacora published Cryptographic Right Answers which is a very well written post summarizing which cryptographic algorithms to pick for a given task.

  • Encrypted & authenticated data diode communications

    Network security Cryptography

    Data diodes provide physically guaranteed one-way communications in computer networks. Data diodes can be built using commercial off the shelf components, such as by disconnecting the receive end of a fiber transceiver. Several dedicated appliances are also available. Traditionally, data diodes have been used in high security settings, such as military or industrial control systems. Data diodes might also have a place in other industries, such as health care or finance, especially to transmit logs, analytics, usage, or billing information.

  • Two cryptographers playing cards

    Cryptography

    I tooted the following puzzle:

    Do you teach cryptography? If yes, ask your students to design a protocol for two people to play a cards game over the internet (eg Uno, Gin Rummy, Go fish or whatever). The protocol should be trustless so the players don’t have to rely on a centralized server to deal cards and players shouldn’t be able to peek at the deck unless the game rule allows it.

    Give extra points to students who come up with simpler protocols, formal proofs, or an actual implementation.

  • Cryptopals

    Cryptography Challenges

    9+ years later, Cryptopals remains a tremendously valuable tool for learning about cryptography by working on practical pieces of code. Cryptopals is a collection of 8 sets of challenges, starting very gently and ending with some non-trivial problems. By working through these challenges you will implement various cryptosystems and well known attacks.