Ethereum hashes almost everything with Keccak-256, which looks like SHA3-256 but returns different output for the same input. Here is the one-byte difference behind that, and why it trips up new developers.
XOR is the simplest cipher there is: one operation that both scrambles and restores. That makes it a CTF favorite and a common obfuscation trick, and it also makes it easy to break. Here is how it works.
Windows never stores your password as text. It keeps a short value derived from it, and that value runs the NTLM protocol. Here is what it is, how it is built, and why the recipe makes it weaker than people expect.
A bare hash looks like noise, but its length, character set, and prefix usually give it away. Here is a practical method for reading those signals, plus a table of common formats you can keep beside you.
Both AES and ChaCha20 are trusted, fast and widely deployed. The right choice comes down to whether the device running your code has hardware crypto support. Here is a clear way to decide.
Cisco Type 7 looks like encryption, but it hides a password behind a published key that anyone can reverse in a second. Here is what it really is, why it exists, and what to use instead.
Rebuilding an object from untrusted bytes is one of the quietest ways an app gets taken over. Here is why it happens across PHP, Java, Python and Ruby, and how to stay safe.
AES-256 has 2^256 possible keys. We break down what that number really means, why no classical or quantum computer can exhaust it, and where AES encryption actually gets broken in the real world.
A field guide to the encodings you meet in capture-the-flag challenges. Learn the visual tells of Base64, hex, Base32, Morse, ROT13 and more, so you can spot the format in seconds and decode it fast.
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