In my various interactions with developers around the country, I have found that most of us do not really understand Cryptography. I believe that understanding Crypto is very important to understand how to build secure systems - it is hard to think of a security mechanism which does not depend on Crypto in one way or the other. So till one really knows how Crypto works, what makes it work, and what one can do with and cannot do with it, one's knowledge of security systems would be based on nebulous assumptions. Not a very good idea when it comes to security.
Now why do people not understand Crypto? In my own case, I did not really know Crypto till I started investigating it about four years ago as a part of a project I was working on. Till then, all I had heard about was that Crypto involves intensive mathematics and that one basically needs to read Bruce Schneier's Applied Cryptography - a huge intimidating tome that did not look welcoming at all. However, when I had do it, I found it rather interesting, and started browsing other material on the net. To my surprise, it was not tedious at all, and rather exciting - a game of cat and mouse played over centuries, and now playing itself out on a global scale!
Over the last two years or so, during all my research and talks on secure coding, I kept realizing how most of what I was reading and talking about follows directly from the principles behind Cryptography, and decided it would be a good idea to share my joy and excitement about Crypto with others. My colleagues liked the idea and the result is the webcast series we are about to start in a couple of hours.
I'll try and keep it fast-paced and exciting. The focus would be on providing conceptual knowledge hard to put together without a lot of research, and sharing best-practices that should come in handy in daily life. You can register for the webcasts at http://www.microsoft.com/india/webcasts/#Crypto. Here's hoping for a fun week ahead!
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