Cryptography with Stephen Haunts
Encrypt all the things! Carl and Richard talk to Stephen Haunts about how to use cryptography properly. And as it turns out, you don't have to be a mathematician to put crypto to work for you! The conversation starts out focusing on password hashing - lots of ways to do it wrong, salting seems complicated, but in the end, there is a built-in, poorly named function in the .NET Framework that will give you proper leading edge password hashing, you just have to know what it is (check the links on the show page). From there Stephen talks about 2-way symmetric and asymmetric encryption. Best used together, and best used on any and all data that you have. Good stuff!
Guests:
Stephen Haunts
Stephen Haunts is an experienced Software Developer and Leader who has worked across multiple business domains including Computer Games, Finance, and Healthcare Retail and Distribution.
Stephen has worked in languages ranging from Assembler, various forms of BASIC, to C and C++, and then finding his love of C# and .NET. Stephen also runs a Software Development and Leadership blog called {Coding in the Trenches} which can be read at stephenhaunts.com.
Stephen also runs a small music label and sound design company where he sculpts sounds from bizarre sound sources like circuit bend speak and spells and Furbies. The site is hauntedhouserecords.co.uk.
As well as blogging, and running software teams for large companies, Stephen is also an author with Pluralsight and a book author for Syncfusion. Stephen also runs some open source projects on CodePlex including SafePad - an encrypted text editor, Text Shredder - an encrypted messaging tool, and Smoke Tester - a post deployment verification testing framework.
Links:
- StartSSL http://www.startssl.com/
- Let's Encrypt https://letsencrypt.org/
- Haunted House Records http://hauntedhouserecords.co.uk/
- Real Random Numbers from .NET https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.security.cryptography.randomnumbergenerator(v=vs.110).aspx
- XKCD on Password Strength https://xkcd.com/936/
- Password-Based Key Derivation Function in the .NET Framework https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.security.cryptography.rfc2898derivebytes(v=vs.110).aspx
- Ashley Madison Password Crack http://arstechnica.co.uk/security/2015/09/once-seen-as-bulletproof-11-million-ashley-madison-passwords-already-cracked/
- Suite B Cryptography https://www.nsa.gov/ia/programs/suiteb_cryptography/
- Cryptography EBook http://www.syncfusion.com/resources/techportal/details/ebooks/cryptography
- Cryptography on Pluralsight https://www.pluralsight.com/courses/practical-cryptography-dotnet