Cryptography, not just a cool name.
One of my favorite books as a kid was Alvin’s Secret Code, a short mystery story I found in my grandma’s bookcase. The story was cool, but even better it had an awesome appendix full of different secret codes and stuff that proved invaluable for my childhood top secret Black Manta club. But what red blooded adolescent male *doesn’t* love secret codes? Of course my fascination with secret codes didn’t end with my innocence, I’ve always thought codes were pretty cool.
So when I first read about how prime numbers can be used in cryptography a few years ago, I was really intrigued with exactly how it all worked beyond the general concept. So recently I sat down with the internet and tried to work through it. And now, thanks to Wikipedia, google, Mathematics: A New Golden Age (not a bad book), and Ian going over my conclusions I think I finally have a solid enough understanding of public key cryptography to write a blog post about it. What is public key cryptography? Read on!
Also, I will be going over some of the background math in italics throughout this post. The Italic sections are not necessary for understanding this post, just additional information for anyone who wants some more detailed examples of what exactly what is going on behind the scenes math-wise in some of these codes. But really, feel free to skip the rest of the italicized sections if you aren’t feeling it.
(and yes, super special prize to the first person to figure out the secret code above!) (more…)
