[Cryptography] Where should I start with cryptography?

[Steve Weis]

On Tue, Nov 18, 2014 at 4:50 PM, Juan Francisco Verhook Greco
<jfverhook at hotmail.com> 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?

Hi Juan. There is a set of crypto coding exercises called Cryptopals
from Matasano Security that start from the basics:
http://cryptopals.com/

I like the approach to teaching crypto by first breaking bad crypto.
Some of the exercises are based on mistakes people make in the real
world all the time. They have solutions to everything in C++ and
should be adding solutions in other languages over time. One note,
these challenges do become progressively harder. The final set is
implementing attacks that were only published a few years ago.

I also taught a mini course several years ago with videos and a few
exercises online. It is very basic and doesn't compare to other
courses online like Dan Boneh's: http://saweis.net/crypto.html

Looking at open source projects is also a good way to learn. I wrote
up a list of crypto projects that "might not suck", which includes
some projects you can learn from:
https://github.com/sweis/crypto-might-not-suck