Question:How to be a Cryptographer?

[Clone]

Must you be a math geek A⁺ student to understand cryptography? ..can't a B student crack or design Hash algorithms?...and how can a B student become a cryptographer?...  is there hope?

[Zesh]

Hard work can over come genius - One of the themes of Naruto

There is hope in the fact that a B is better than a C

[Matriplex]

Anyone can do anything.

There are kids in the "elevated" mathematical courses at my school who don't know that when you mix all the colors together you get white. Now this has nothing (well maybe a littttle bit) to do with Math, and it proves that one can be very good at one thing but not very good at another. So you may not be very good at so called school math, or maybe you just don't want to spend time on it, but there's no reason you can't learn Cryptography.
It all depends on what you want to spend your time on, nothing more really. I have a B in my current mathematics course, and I was able to reverse engineer a simple encryption algorithm very easily. Of course that's nothing, but if I (or you) spent time on it we can become masters. Same idea applies for near everything.

[iTpHo3NiX]

"Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid."
-Albert Einstein

[Deque]

Must you be a math geek A⁺ student to understand cryptography? ..can't a B student crack or design Hash algorithms?...and how can a B student become a cryptographer?...  is there hope?

Cracking has nothing to do with understanding.
If you want to understand WHY certain algorithms work, you need knowledge in math. How you aquired that knowledge is irrelevant. Your grades are irrelevant. The ony relevant thing is your knowledge or your motivation to put work into gaining that knowledge.
If you want to crack hashes or implement ready-to-use algorithms from libraries, you don't need to know anything.

[Clone]

Thanks guyz  am touched... I have a long holiday i guess i will start right away.

[Axon]

Mathematics is the first step towards understanding cryptography, start with number theory.

[pl0tuS]

You might wanna talk to Factionwars over IRC because he is learning math. He might be able to suggest you some good sites to start with. Here's a good one.
https://www.khanacademy.org/

[kenjoe41]

If by any kind Gods you are learning this for fun, jump right in n pick up the math as you go. Might help you to focus on those fields relevant to crypto. But the gods forbid if you want to go rpofessional with this, then learn some math and spend the rest of your years with unkempt hair, unintelligible speech, lice stricken clothes yet never breaking any algorithm yet.

[Arkalian]

Must you be a math geek A⁺ student to understand cryptography? ..can't a B student crack or design Hash algorithms?...and how can a B student become a cryptographer?...  is there hope?

Hi Clone,
     You ask a great question. I am actually in college to do that very thing. Here are a few really good places to start.

1. Here is an Article by Bruce Schneier. This is from his famous blog "Schneier On Security". I am sure you will find it helpful. He is actually one of the top Cryptographers/Cryptographic Engineers/Mathematicians in the world and has written several top books on Cryptography. ie Applied Cryptography, Practical Cryptography, Cryptography Engineering. He invented the Blowfish and Twofish (AES Top Five Finalist) Ciphers, along with the Skein Hashing Function (Another AES Top Five Finalist).

https://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram-9910.html#SoYouWanttobeaCryptographer


2.This is a link University of Washington Course of Cryptography. U. of Washington is one of the top Crypto schools in the world. Home of famous Professors like Neal Koblitz (Elliptic Curve Cryptography) and Josh Benaloh (Microsoft). It's Free. Just click on the Lectures Section.

http://courses.cs.washington.edu/courses/csep590/06wi/

3. The Handbook of Applied Cryptography. aka. The Cryptography Bible. This is actually the book for the U. of Washington Course. It was written by Alfred Menezes and Scott Vanstone. Both of these guys are from the University of Waterloo's Centre for Applied Cryptographic Research. I went ahead and uploaded it for you.

The Handbook of Applied Cryptography
http://upload.evilzone.org/download.php?id=5303909&type=zip

4. Stanford University's Online Cryptography Course By Dan Boneh
You just need to sign up and it's completely Free. It's awesome.
https://www.coursera.org/course/crypto

I hope this will help you and anyone else interested in Cryptography.

Ark

[Stackprotector]

You might wanna talk to Factionwars over IRC because he is learning math. He might be able to suggest you some good sites to start with. Here's a good one.
https://www.khanacademy.org/

There is a full vid tutorial on cryptography there under applied math, very good!

[bluechill]

Having taken courses in cryptography, you really need to know discrete mathematics really well.  In order to know discrete mathematics really well you need to be really proficient in algebra and differential equations.  You also need to have very good logic skills.  So you don't need to be really good at say vector calculus, you just need to be really good at some types of math.  So no you don't need to be a super math genius to do cryptography you just need to be really good at some things of math which is kind of a given, given that this is a field in comp. sci./sec.