#cryptography

German Divers find Enigma machine at bottom of Balitc sea

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▻https://www.thefirstnews.com/article/first-mistaken-for-a-typewriter-divers-discover-rare-enigma-machine-at

In a Facebook post, the Enigma Museum in Poznań revealed: “The Enigma was deliberately THROWN into the sea on May 4th or 5th when U-boats were ordered by Karl Donitz to end the war and surrender to the English. It is clear that the crews did not want a top-secret code device to fall into the hands of the enemy, even when the war was already lost.”

However, this version is doubted by Dr Jann Witt, a historian from the German Naval Association. He told Deutsche Presse-Agentur that he believed the machine was thrown overboard from a German warship in the final days of the war.

He claimed that it is less likely to have come from a scuttled submarine as U-boats used the more complex four-rotor Enigma machines. This version, he says, only has three rotors.

▻https://www.ibtimes.com/divers-find-nazis-enigma-code-machine-baltic-sea-3094959

▻https://themilehighpost.com/2020/12/06/lost-nazi-enigma-machine-discovered-in-baltic-sea-by-diving-clean-u

▻https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/12/enigma-cipher-machine-used-by-the-nazis-in-wwii-found-in-the-baltic-sea

▻https://www.rtbf.be/info/insolites/detail_des-plongeurs-decouvrent-une-machine-enigma-de-la-seconde-guerre-mondial

#archeology #encryption #cryptography #Alan_Turing

A Guide to Post-Quantum #cryptography
▻https://hackernoon.com/a-guide-to-post-quantum-cryptography-d785a70ea04b?source=rss----3a8144ea

This article was written by Ben Perez and originally appeared on the Trail of Bits Blog. It is being republished with permission of the author and includes additional notes & comments from researchers at the RI lab.For many high-assurance applications such as TLS traffic, medical databases, and blockchains, forward secrecy is absolutely essential. It is not sufficient to prevent an attacker from immediately decrypting sensitive information. Here the threat model encompasses situations where the adversary may dedicate many years to the decryption of ciphertexts after their collection. One potential way forward secrecy might be broken is that a combination of increased computing power and number-theoretic breakthroughs make attacking current cryptography tractable. However, unless (...)

#security #quantum-cryptography #quantum-computing #post-quantum-cryptography

#zcoin’s new anonymous payment system, Lelantus
▻https://hackernoon.com/zcoins-new-anonymous-payment-system-lelantus-23b27a450a9?source=rss----3

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This is a summary of Lelantus, the anonymous payment system coming up as a replacement of Zcoin’s current protocol Zerocoin. Lelantus hides transaction amounts and participants without a trusted setup and relies on simpler cryptographic primitives compared to something like Zcash. It also removed the need for spending or creating fixed denomination coins present in the current Zerocoin protocol and the need for RSA accumulators corresponding to each denomination.The basic idea in Lelantus is similar to Monero (and some others) where the spender while spending a coin hides “his” coin among a set of coins (not necessarily “owned” by him) and proves to the ledger (blockchain) that he “owns” a coin in this set and the coin has not been spent yet. This set of coins is called the anonymity set for (...)

#cryptography #cryptocurrency #zero-knowledge-proofs #crypto

How I finally started learning new things like #cryptography
▻https://hackernoon.com/learning-new-things-like-cryptography-ebabc87c8b8?source=rss----3a8144ea

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My experience taking the course Cryptography I by Stanford as offered by Coursera.The first rule of cryptography is never to implement one yourself. “It’s going to get crushed to dust by anyone who knows what they’re doing”mithi/simple-cryptographyLife as I’ve known itI do believe that everyone deep down at one point in their lives has thought that Cryptography — the art of writing and solving codes — is fascinating and considered learning more about it. People want to keep secrets safe, and people want to know the secrets of others.When I was a young child, as a game, my friends and I used to make “cipher algorithms”. These were basically just substitution ciphers with a few complicated but totally useless rules added. It’s embarrassing and quite frankly stupid, but I guess we had fun like with most (...)

#programming #security #python #tech

Cryptographic essence of #bitcoin: Part 2 — How do public/private keys work?,
▻https://hackernoon.com/cryptographic-essence-of-bitcoin-part-2-how-do-public-private-keys-work-

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Cryptographic essence of Bitcoin: Part 2 — How do public/private keys work?, Elliptical #cryptography & Proof of workLet’s find out how to create a Bitcoin AddressElliptic Curves CryptographyElliptic curve cryptography (ECC) is an approach to public-key cryptography (watch video) based on the algebraic structure of elliptic curves over finite fields.The elliptic curve below is an example of an elliptic curve, similar to that used by bitcoin.Example of an EllipticCurveThe elliptic curve technique is used to create the public key derived from the private key.How does it work:Starting with a private key in the form of a randomly generated number k, we multiply it by a predetermined point on the curve called the generator point G to produce another point somewhere else on the curve, which is the (...)

#finance #cryptocurrency #blockchain

#ethereum Support for ZK-SNARKs
▻https://hackernoon.com/ethereum-support-for-zk-snarks-ce103bd6ac89?source=rss----3a8144eabfe3--

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ZK-SNARKsThe ZK-SNARKS series continues with another article from our #blockchain expert, Alexandre. We wish you all a Happy Friday!I have the rare privilege of being able to do research at work. Since my working life was half industry and half academy, I relish the opportunity to join both in the same day job. There are the drive and urgency of writing production code, but also the excitement and uncertainty of not knowing if something will work.In many ways, research is like an adventure: you have a more or less defined goal, and possibly several ways to reach it. You go down one path, battle your obstacles or find clever ways to avoid them until you reach an insurmountable wall. You go back, repeat and repeat again until you quit or achieve your Grail.For the last couple of months or (...)

#technology #cryptography #zksnark

Cryptographic essence of #bitcoin part # 1: What is a Hash function?
▻https://hackernoon.com/cryptographic-essence-of-bitcoin-part-1-what-is-a-hash-function-f468e7f7

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What is a Hash?Cryptographic hash functions are mathematical operations run on digital data. In Bitcoin, all the operations use SHA256 as the underlying cryptographic hash function.SHA (Secure Hash Algorithm) is a set of cryptographic hash functions designed by the United States National Security Agency (NSA).To put it in simple term, a Hash function is like a black box, where you input any kind of digital information of any size, and the result (output) is an alphanumeric string (e.g.: 0xe3b0c44298fc1c149afbf4c8996fb92427ae41e4649b934ca495991b7852b855). In the case of SHA-256, the output is 32 bytes. This function has 2 characteristics:1) Unequivocal: the hash (output) is like the fingerprint of the input data. From a human fingerprint, you can´t create the human. So from the hash of a (...)

#cryptocurrency #cryptography #hashing #blockchain

Public Key #cryptography Simply Explained
▻https://hackernoon.com/public-key-cryptography-simply-explained-e932e3093046?source=rss----3a81

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Photo by Liam Macleod on UnsplashPublic key cryptography seems magical to everyone, even those who understand it. In this post, I’m going to explain public key cryptography. Public Key Cryptography is based on asymmetric cryptography, so first let us talk about symmetric cryptography.▻https://medium.com/media/c28f9fc84629b8f11d5c569ae4d99c81/hrefSymmetric CryptographyYour front door is usually locked by a key. This key unlocks & locks your front door. With symmetric cryptography, you have one key which you use to unlock and lock things.Only people with the key or a copy of the key can unlock the door. Now, imagine you’re on holiday in Bali. You want to invite your friend around to look after your cat ? while you’re on the beautiful beaches ?️.Before the holiday, you give your friend the (...)

#hacking #security #programming #computer-science

Zero-Knowledge Proofs: A Layman’s Introduction
▻https://hackernoon.com/zero-knowledge-proofs-a-laymans-introduction-e9c1f50208e8?source=rss----

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Alex has dedicated more of his time to create an article where he is giving an introduction to what ZK-SNARKs are. We encourage you to have a read and leave a comment if you find it useful.For the past months, I’ve been immersed daily in a thrilling and cutting-edge world: that of Zero-Knowledge (ZK) proofs. It is a challenging field, and because of that, one I explore with great enjoyment.Today, I will talk a bit more about this quest of mine. The end goal is to implement a practical prototype that Artos (my employer) can use in their ticketing solutions for the Aventus protocol. I am not concerned with the final usage, for now, only with the ZK technology itself: what it is, what we can do with it and some of the tools available out there.Zero-Knowledge ProofsIn my experience, people (...)

#cryptography #zksnark #coding #zcash #blockchain

Understanding The Elusive #blockchain Technology — Part 1
▻https://hackernoon.com/understanding-the-elusive-blockchain-technology-part-1-1172fd8d02c2?sour

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Understanding The Elusive Blockchain Technology — Part 1@clintadairDespite the popular notion, Blockchains are not that complex once you get the general idea behind them.What makes Blockchain so interestingly difficult to implement is that it is made up of some many different components of varying complexity and a good Blockchain developer needs to know how to connect these components in the right order to build good Blockchains.In this post, I will explain what a Blockchain actually is, then start talking about various features of Blockchain such as Hashing, Immutability, and Distributed P2P Network.This is Part 1 of 2 of my series on Blockchain. Part 2 will be out soon!Defining BlockchainThe credit for inventing Blockchain technology is generally given to an anonymous entity (could be one (...)

#crypto #cryptocurrency #cryptography #blockchain-technology

Whitfield Diffie on the History of #cryptography
▻https://hackernoon.com/whitfield-diffie-on-the-history-of-cryptography-cae4d2469268?source=rss-

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Audio interview transcription — WBD069Note: the following is a transcription of my interview with Whitfield Diffie. I use Rev.com from translations and they remove ums, errs and half sentences. I have reviewed the transcription but if you find any mistakes, please feel free to email me. You can listen to the original recording here.You can subscribe to the podcast and listen to all episodes here.In this episode, I talk with legend of cryptography, Whitfield Diffie. Whit was working on cryptography long before #bitcoin existed, building the foundations for which Bitcoin relies upon. We discuss his history, Bitcoin and his views on privacy.▻https://medium.com/media/b36e9c77d8b36d44f94deccbd50dd50e/hrefConnect with What Bitcoin Did:Listen: iTunes | Spotify | Stitcher | SoundCloud | YouTube | (...)

#tech

Generating #rsa Private and Public Keys
▻https://hackernoon.com/generating-rsa-private-and-public-keys-b82a06db6d1c?source=rss----3a8144

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We use SSH, HTTPS, etc., on a daily basis. These programs depend on RSA asymmetric key encryption and decryption for providing #security.Asymmetric key encryption involves two keys, public key and private key. Public key is used for encrypting the message and Private key is used for decrypting the message.In this post, we will look into how a public key and private key pair are generated using simple mathematics.We will use small numbers for simplicity.Public Key ( e, n )Public key is made up of two numbers called e and n.Generation of nGenerate two prime numbers.Prime number 1, p = 7Prime number 2, q = 17n = p x qn = 7 x 17 = 119Thus n = 119Generation of eCompute totient of n, ϕ(n) = ( p -1) x (q -1)Choose a random prime number that has a greatest common divisor (gcd) of 1 with ϕ(n)ϕ(n) = ( 7 — 1 (...)

#public-key-cryptography #cryptography #public-key

Conditional payments on “Bitcoin” using Discreet Log Contracts
▻https://hackernoon.com/conditional-payments-on-bitcoin-using-discreet-log-contracts-eed19e086e3

Conditional Payments on #bitcoin using Discreet Log ContractsDiscreet log contract is a conditional payment mechanism invented by Tadge Dryja, co-author of the Bitcoin Lightning Network paper and a member of MIT’s Digital Currency Initiative team. The paper was written in 2017.OverviewCurrently conditional payments on blockchains like Bitcoin and Ethereum are done through “smart contracts” where the conditions are coded in limiting language like Bitcoin’s Script or a turing complete language like Solidity and this code is deployed on chain. The chain will later execute this code along with other inputs provided and then transfer the funds to one of the participants. This requires the chain to know the conditions, hence anyone in the world can learn the conditions. Also the chain has to (...)

#crypto #cryptocurrency #cryptography #conditional-payments

Asymmetric #cryptography In Blockchains
▻https://hackernoon.com/asymmetric-cryptography-in-blockchains-d1a4c1654a71?source=rss----3a8144

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Asymmetric cryptography, also known as public-key cryptography, is one of the key components of #blockchain technology. This form of cryptography allows everyone to verify the integrity of transactions, protect funds from hackers and much more. But how does it work?What is asymmetric cryptography?To understand asymmetric cryptography it is important to first understand the meaning of cryptography.Cryptography is a method of using advanced mathematical principles in storing and transmitting data in a particular form so that only those for whom it is intended can read and process it. Encryption is a key concept in cryptography — It is a process whereby a message is encoded in a format that cannot be read or understood by an eavesdropper. The technique is old and was first used by Caesar to (...)

#crypto #cryptocurrency #security

Will We Ever Run Out of #bitcoin Wallets?
▻https://hackernoon.com/can-we-some-day-run-our-of-bitcoin-wallets-eb09d35b9545?source=rss----3a

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We are taught to be frugal, but when it comes to tech, same rules do not apply.Most companies and people who use Bitcoin create new wallet for each transaction. This is also what most crypto #security specialist advice.That’s such a waste, one might think.Why to throw a perfectly good Bitcoin wallet after it has been used only once?In normal life we are taught to be frugal. Every recourse we have is limited and every piece of item should be reused and then recycled.But in tech things are different. They are indepletable, almost infinite.There are 2¹⁶⁰ possible Bitcoin wallets. In simple number that is1,461,501,637,330,902,918,203,684,832,716,283,019,655,932,542,976Let’s put this number to perspective.Let’s imagine that every person (7,7 billion) living on earth would create 1 billion wallets per (...)

#quantum-computing #cryptocurrency #cryptography

Distributed #pki: Development and Use Cases
▻https://hackernoon.com/distributed-pki-development-and-use-cases-a828287a2e67?source=rss----3a8

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Distributed PKI isn’t a new idea. There are a lot of articles and attempts to implement the concept in practice. PKI (d) is based on the assumption that there are critical vulnerabilities in the process of issuance and management of certificates by CAs, so there is a need to decentralize certificate authority and make the process more transparent and difficult to compromise.The imperfections of centralized PKI rise to the surface once in a while, causing significant financial and reputational damage. One of the latest examples in mid-2018 describes researchers who found a brand new malware project using stolen digital certificates from several Taiwanese tech-companies, namely D-Link, to sign their malware and making them look like legitimate applications. What is baffling is that (...)

#what-is-pki #distributed-pki #public-key-cryptography #cryptography

High-definition Data
▻https://hackernoon.com/high-definition-data-eeab16b055a3?source=rss----3a8144eabfe3---4

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Verifiable Claims are a new type of data resource with high-definition qualities. This represents a unique new class of information. High-definition data has very many useful applications in the digital world that could profoundly change how society operates in the physical world, as this is the basis for establishing webs of trust, between people, machines and information.Data captured in this format can be high in resolution and high in fidelity. This article explains the core concepts of these new standards and proposes how thinking about data having ‘high-definition’ qualities could produce engineering and #data-science breakthroughs.Let’s start with some easy information theoryInformation theory is a way of explaining how information gets quantified, stored and communicated. I would (...)

#web3 #digital-identity #blockchain #cryptography

Adventures of an Enclave (SGX / #tees)
▻https://hackernoon.com/adventures-of-an-enclave-sgx-tees-9e7f8a975b0b?source=rss----3a8144eabfe

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So what can SGX and TEEs be used for beyond the obvious cases?Treasure MapImagine a magical piece of hardware that no one can see inside, even if they break it open, that is the promise of Intel SGX and TEEs (Trusted Execution Environments).Cryptographers for decades have been pushing the limits of secure computation. This is when the computing party is oblivious to the result and underlying data. Example: did Alice or Bob supply a larger number without revealing the underlying numbers to training machine learning models on encrypted data. Some of these problems have been solved, but often times the solutions are neither generalised nor efficient.Let’s discuss how trusted hardware works, its standard use cases and some more unique ones, before discussing various #blockchain projects that (...)

#cryptography #intel-sgx #enclave-adventure

#eos FOR IDIOTS : How To Change Your EOS Active Key Using Greymass
▻https://hackernoon.com/eos-for-idiots-how-to-change-your-eos-active-key-using-greymass-38760d32

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A lot of you are in the same boat: you have an EOS genesis snapshot account which means that your owner key is the same as your active key. And you’ve now learned that this is a vulnerability.I successfully changed my active key using the steps below and many people are now asking for this info.Now you want to be safe, and you want a new active key. This tutorial shows you how to create a new active key pair and update it using the Greymass wallet. Your owner key remains the same. All we are doing is adding a new active key so that your account has two different keys: one for your owner key and a different one for your active key.Step One: Generate A New Active Key PairGenerate a new key pair by going here: ▻https://nadejde.github.io/eos-token-sale/This will create a new public and private (...)

#cryptography #cryptocurrency #eos-for-idiots #blockchain

What’s Shor’s Algorithm? (Quantum Computing Weekly News for Dec 11 2018)
▻https://hackernoon.com/whats-shor-s-algorithm-quantum-computing-weekly-news-for-dec-11-2018-721

What’s Shor’s Algorithm? | Quantum Computing Weekly Roundup Dec 11 2018This is a syndicated version of my weekly e-mail round-up of news about Quantum Computing. Visit the homepage to subscribe to updates and check out previous issues.? Hi there, and thank you for taking a look at lucky issue #7!Last week we had a great profile on Anastasia Marchenkova, and I highly recommend checking it out if you missed it, and I’m excited to say that we already have a new guest lined up for January! ?Looking for a particular area of quantum computing you’d like to see covered in the next issue? Ping me and let me know!Tiny Fact of the weekWhat’s this Shor’s algorithm thing I keep on hearing about? In short, it’s a quantum algorithm which is able to answer a very computationally difficult question relatively (...)

#encryption #cryptography #quantum-computer #quantum-computing

RS256 in #ocaml/ReasonML
▻https://hackernoon.com/rs256-in-ocaml-reasonml-9ae579b9420a?source=rss----3a8144eabfe3---4

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It took me a decent amount of time figuring out how to sign messages for a #reasonml GitHub app. Here are my findings.tl;dr: code snippets are below, the reason-native labels checker service is open source on GitHubJust before we publish new versions of Yoshi, Wix’s internal development toolchain, we generate our CHANGELOG.md file using the wonderful lerna-changelog. “lerna-changelog will show all pull requests that have been merged since the latest tagged commit in the repository. That is however only true for pull requests with certain labels applied.” GitHub labels are shared between PRs and issues, but only some of them are used for the changelog generation.In order to reduce confusion, we chose to have PR: prefix to all labels that affects the changelog, so maintainers would know to (...)

#functional-programming #reason-ml-github-app #cryptography

Smart Contracts, Part 2: The Legality
▻https://hackernoon.com/smart-contracts-part-2-the-legality-761cc4be100d?source=rss----3a8144eab

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The legality of smart contracts is often ambiguous — regulations need to be clarified, and a smart dispute-resolution system must be created. The past few years have seen a global spike in the excitement over smart contracts and the #blockchain technology that supports them. But not everyone has gotten carried away, Wharton Legal Studies Professor Kevin Werbach is one such person.In a recent podcast, Werbach said, “Even though we think machines can render contracts effectively, there are lots of situations where they cannot.” This is a good rejoinder to those who proclaim that smart contracts have ‘solved’ contract law or that we can build a future without traditional government or legal systems.“Even though we think machines can render contracts effectively, there are lots of situations where (...)

#cryptography #smart-contracts #smart-contract-legality #ethereum

The Three Barriers to Mainstream #blockchain Adoption We Need to Be Talking About Now
▻https://hackernoon.com/the-three-barriers-to-mainstream-blockchain-adoption-we-need-to-be-talki

With growing attention on blockchain technology, more people are developing opinions about what the future of the technology will really look like. Skeptics often cite a few core barriers to blockchain adoption. For example, you can pretty regularly find issues and theories around blockchain energy, regulation, and scaling in the headlines.But these barriers are actually common problems to new technology. And while there’s no guarantee that these challenges will resolve themselves, I think solutions will be found. I’ve seen how the blockchain community is eager to tackle these high-profile issues and move the technology forward.Alongside these “big” issues are others that are sometimes overlooked, at least by more mainstream media. These “other” barriers have held back blockchain adoption (...)

#cryptography #cryptocurrency #decentralized #dapps

#blockchain Scalability: Do Layer I Solutions Hold the Key?
▻https://hackernoon.com/blockchain-scalability-do-layer-i-solutions-hold-the-key-f3d9388c60f3?so

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Cryptocurrencies currently do not scale in any meaningful sense. The scalability of blockchain technology — in both total transaction volume and the number of independent participants involved in processing them — is a crucial hurdle to mainstream adoption. This is especially true when weighted against security and decentralisation challenges.Visa handles around 24,000 transactions per second (TPS) at capacity and needless to say, leaders like Bitcoin and #ethereum fall well short of that figure. Many other projects claim global-scale TPS — EOS or Zilliqa, for example — but these are mostly untested claims.Many methods for #scaling have been proposed, be they layer I ‘on-chain’ solutions or layer II solutions built on top of the blockchain ‘off-chain’. There are many differing viewpoints on how best (...)

#cryptocurrency #cryptography

Solutions for private key management in decentralized apps
▻https://hackernoon.com/solutions-for-private-key-management-in-decentralized-apps-24f95634be16?

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How to reconcile #ethereum’s call for decentralization and users’ need for support services?On Ethereum, private keys are used to access accounts, sign messages etc. Once you lose access to your private key, you lose access to all funds stored with that account.How is that different from losing a credit card pin code? It is you can’t ask the bank to give you a new code, because the bank doesn’t exist on Ethereum. Your funds are still credited to your address on the #blockchain, but there is no way for you to withdraw them.Accounts and [DApp-] services on the Ethereum blockchain aim to be decentralized, and no one is safekeeping access codes on your behalf.A service storing your private key in its database would be able to access your funds at any moment — just like a bank — and this is (...)

#ux-design #cryptography #dapps