Cryptography is awesome, but modern cryptography has a seriously high barrier to entry that prevents a lot of people from getting into its technical side. Fortunately, many important lessons, attacks, and concepts can be demonstrated using classic pre-digital ciphers. Over the course of this four-hour workshop attendees will:
* Learn the technical basics of cryptography.
* Implement classic ciphers by hand.
* Learn about weaknesses in these ciphers and how to leverage these weaknesses to crack said ciphers.
* Get examples (in Python) from my Open Source framework to automate standard cryptographic functions, including attacks and analysis.
* Learn the history and stories surrounding my chosen ciphers.
* Learn a methodology so that when given an unknown ciphertext, they will be able to diagnose the cipher used and implement an attack.
Ultimately we're aiming to have the workshop be 50% technical instruction, 40% hands-on work with guidance, and 10% historical narratives.