45: A high level introduction to cryptography

In this episode we give a very (very) high level introduction to
cryptography concepts. No math or programming background required!

Links:

Crypto 101,
probably the BEST book for learning about cryptography concepts.
And a relevant talk from PyCon!

We mentioned
RSA,
which is the first publicly published algorithm for public key
cryptography. These days most public key cryptography uses
elliptic curves
instead. It's possible that in
the future, something else will be recommended instead!

Playing around with GnuPG can be a great way to learn about
cryptography as a user, but... it's also not the easiest thing to
learn either, and we don't personally believe that GPG/PGP's web of
trust model is a realistic path for user security. (But what we
recommend instead, that's a topic for a future episode.) Still,
a useful tool in all sorts of ways.

Mixing and matching these things at a low level can be tricky,
and unexpected vulnerabilities can easily occur.
Cryptographic Right Answers
has been a useful page, but the cryptography world keeps moving!