cyber revision
cyberrev

Module objectives

Cryptography

Cryptography is the part of security people most often get wrong by trusting the maths and ignoring everything around it. This module builds the working knowledge to use the primitives correctly and to recognise how systems break.

By the end you will be able to:

  • Choose and reason about symmetric ciphers and block-cipher modes, and explain why ECB leaks and why authenticated GCM is the default.
  • Work the asymmetric model both ways: encryption versus signatures, RSA versus elliptic curves, and Diffie-Hellman key exchange.
  • Pick the right hash for the job, store passwords with a salted slow KDF, and tell a MAC apart from a signature.
  • Read a certificate, follow a chain of trust to its root, and explain what a TLS handshake actually delivers.
  • Spot the real-world failures: weak randomness, nonce reuse, padding oracles, side channels, and the quantum horizon.

The exam is practical: ten artifacts to crack with free tools, graded in your browser. Get seven of ten and the certificate is yours.