[Cryptography] Where should I start with cryptography?

[Jonathan Thornburg]

On 18/11/14 at 08:50pm, Juan Francisco Verhook Greco wrote:
> Hi, my name is Juan. I'm a young boy that is beginning with
> cryptography. I know python and basic c++, linux enthusiast, still
> though I just began with cryptography I want one day to build my
> own cryptographic hash function. Where should I begin? I would
> appreciate any topics regarding anything.Thanks in advance

As well as the crypto (which various other people have covered),
it's also very important to know some of the "big picture" issues
which surround the crypto.  I highly recommend Schneier's blog
(https://www.schneier.com/blog/) and the following two books:

Peter Gutmann
"Engineering Security"
drafts available free online at
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/book.pdf

Ross Anderson
"Security Engineering", 2nd Edition
Wiley, 2008, ISBN 978-0-470-06852-6

ciao,

-- 
-- Jonathan Thornburg <jthorn at astro.indiana.edu>
   Dept of Astronomy & IUCSS, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, USA
   "There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched
    at any given moment.  How often, or on what system, the Thought Police
    plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork.  It was even conceivable
    that they watched everybody all the time."  -- George Orwell, "1984"