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I'm bad at crypto. I'm well aware that I'm bad at crypto. In fact, I would venture to guess that I know next to nothing about it. The problem isn't that I don't

I'm bad at crypto. I'm well aware that I'm bad at crypto. In fact, I would venture to guess that I know next to nothing about it. The problem isn't that I don't know what I don't know...the problem is that I don't know what (or whom) I can trust. And that is the bigger problem with crypto. It would be nice if we had resources that could tell us not only the best practices, but what their downfalls are and their relative difficulties of cracking. Some common sense tells me that there is a combination of techniques that are simple and robust enough that I would have to worry about phishing before I had to worry about better security. But I don't know what that combination is, and I don't know if I can trust anybody that tells me.

alinajaf 13y ago
Author here. A good place to start (mentioned in the article). http://www.matasano.com/articles/crypto-challenges/ http://www.matasano.com/articles/crypto-challenges/ Never met any of them in real life, but they seem like good people to me. I've actually used knowledge I picked up from those exercises to fix vulnerabilities in past clients code, and I'm not yet half-way through them.
epsylon 13y ago
Try Dan Boneh's crypto course on coursera [1]. It covers quite a lot of ground, both practical and theoretical, and includes programming exercises similar to the matasano puzzles. Without a doubt it's one of the best courses of the dozen MOOCs I've taken. There's also a followup course [2] (I haven't taken it yet personally, but I believe the currently scheduled run will be the first). Interestingly enough, there's also an upcoming security course (with no date planned yet) which will cover the application programming part of security and will be co-taught by him. [3] [1] https://www.coursera.org/course/crypto https://www.coursera.org/course/crypto [2] https://www.coursera.org/course/crypto2 https://www.coursera.org/course/crypto2 [3] https://www.coursera.org/course/security https://www.coursera.org/course/security
- cryptbe 13y ago
  Glad that you like Dan Boneh's crypto class. I made the programming exercises :-).
  - StavrosK 13y ago
    They were very well done, and I loved the course overall, so congrats. I like how Dan knows how to preemptively answer every question I had.

alinajaf 13y ago

Author here. A good place to start (mentioned in the article). http://www.matasano.com/articles/crypto-challenges/ http://www.matasano.com/articles/crypto-challenges/ Never met any of them in real life, but they seem like good people to me. I've actually used knowledge I picked up from those exercises to fix vulnerabilities in past clients code, and I'm not yet half-way through them.

epsylon 13y ago

Try Dan Boneh's crypto course on coursera [1]. It covers quite a lot of ground, both practical and theoretical, and includes programming exercises similar to the matasano puzzles. Without a doubt it's one of the best courses of the dozen MOOCs I've taken. There's also a followup course [2] (I haven't taken it yet personally, but I believe the currently scheduled run will be the first). Interestingly enough, there's also an upcoming security course (with no date planned yet) which will cover the application programming part of security and will be co-taught by him. [3] [1] https://www.coursera.org/course/crypto https://www.coursera.org/course/crypto [2] https://www.coursera.org/course/crypto2 https://www.coursera.org/course/crypto2 [3] https://www.coursera.org/course/security https://www.coursera.org/course/security

cryptbe 13y ago
Glad that you like Dan Boneh's crypto class. I made the programming exercises :-).
- StavrosK 13y ago
  They were very well done, and I loved the course overall, so congrats. I like how Dan knows how to preemptively answer every question I had.