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The Mathematics of Elliptic Curve Cryptography

In 1985, Neal Koblitz and Victor Miller independently proposed using elliptic curves for cryptography. Their idea seemed exotic at the time—why use curves when simple multiplication works? Four decades later, elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) secures your Bitcoin wallet, your TLS connections, and your iPhone's Secure Enclave. This

AES: Deep Dive

In 1997, the U.S. government launched a worldwide competition to find a replacement for the aging DES (Data Encryption Standard). Four years later, they chose Rijndael—a cipher designed by two Belgian cryptographers—and renamed it AES. Today, AES protects everything from your hard drive to your bank transactions.

How to Create RAID 1 Arrays in Fedora

I recently became the proud owner of an Apple MacBook Pro with an M2 Pro chip, which meant my old PC got a new life as a home server running Fedora. The server houses six hard drives that I configured into three RAID 1 arrays for redundant storage. This guide

Hill Cipher: The Mathematics of Matrix Encryption

What if you could crack an encrypted military message by guessing just nine letters? The Hill cipher—invented in 1929 by mathematician Lester S. Hill—is elegant, mathematically beautiful, and fatally flawed. It was the first practical polygraphic cipher, encrypting multiple letters at once using matrix multiplication. This post explains

SHA-3: Deep Dive

SHA-3 is the odd one out in the SHA family. Unlike SHA-1 and SHA-2 (which share the same NSA-designed Merkle-Damgård structure), SHA-3 was selected through a public competition and uses a completely different design called Keccak. This post explores the entire SHA-3 family, including its unique extendable-output functions (XOFs). The

The Evolution of Wi-Fi Security: From WEP to WPA3

Wi-Fi security has undergone dramatic changes since the late 1990s. What started as a fundamentally flawed encryption scheme has evolved into robust, cryptographically sound protocols. Understanding this evolution helps you appreciate why certain practices matter and why you should never connect to a WEP network. This guide walks through each

Hashcat on Apple Silicon: GPU-Accelerated Password Cracking

Hashcat on Apple Silicon: GPU-Accelerated Password Cracking

Apple Silicon Macs (M1, M2, M3, M4) aren't just for creative work and AI inference—they're surprisingly capable password-cracking machines. With hashcat's native Metal backend, you can leverage those GPU cores for high-speed hash cracking right from your MacBook. Legal Disclaimer: Only use hashcat