Week 2a: Hash Functions & Cryptographic Fingerprints
Goal Understand cryptographic hash functions: what they do, how they differ from encryption, why some are broken (MD5), and how to use SHA-256 for file integrity verification. Prerequisites: Week 1 (Cypherpunk Ideals & Threat Modeling) This is Part 1 of 3 - Covers hashing fundamentals and integrity verification. Introduction: Why Cryptography Matters Before we dive into algorithms, let’s understand what we’re building toward: Cryptography is mathematics applied to privacy. It transforms the abstract right to privacy into concrete protection through proofs, not promises. ...