Crazy Flamboyant for the Rap Enjoyment
October 16, 2016 5:45 PM Subscribe
After a long wait, Set 8 of the Cryptopals Crypto Challenges has been announced. Designed to be approachable by neophytes and newbies, one Hacker News commenter describes them as "...a much more interesting version of those silly string manipulation tasks you get in CS101, except that instead of passing a course you break harder and harder crypto." Filippo Valsorda, a very well-known and respected cryptographer has announced that he will be doing a live speedrun of the challenges on Twitch.
"... silly string manipulation tasks ..."
Aaand speaking of parsing, this ambiguous phrase took me a few seconds.
posted by ZenMasterThis at 6:05 PM on October 16, 2016 [5 favorites]
Aaand speaking of parsing, this ambiguous phrase took me a few seconds.
posted by ZenMasterThis at 6:05 PM on October 16, 2016 [5 favorites]
Man, I remember starting these last year [ha nope two years ago!], getting through the first set, and then completely not comprehending something likely actually simple in the second set.
Maybe I'll try again.
(I was using Rust too, but it might all be out of date now—I think it was actually before stable rust had been released.)
posted by kenko at 8:26 PM on October 16, 2016
Maybe I'll try again.
(I was using Rust too, but it might all be out of date now—I think it was actually before stable rust had been released.)
posted by kenko at 8:26 PM on October 16, 2016
I suspect it was problem, oh, 12? 13? The one where you have to decrypt a ciphertext one byte at a time using an oracle. I had to walk away from that one for a couple of days and see it with fresh eyes, and then it was totally obvious. :)
posted by TheNewWazoo at 8:29 PM on October 16, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by TheNewWazoo at 8:29 PM on October 16, 2016 [1 favorite]
Yep.
posted by kenko at 8:34 PM on October 16, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by kenko at 8:34 PM on October 16, 2016 [1 favorite]
incredibly good as a tool for practical learning.
Yes. I used them to learn Clojure and recommend them to others as a fun way to learn a new language.
posted by jjwiseman at 5:30 AM on October 17, 2016
Yes. I used them to learn Clojure and recommend them to others as a fun way to learn a new language.
posted by jjwiseman at 5:30 AM on October 17, 2016
Oh hey I know Filippo! He and I were in the same batch at the Recurse Center in the fall of 2013. I helped advise him on thinking about grad school. Glad he's getting respect in the wider world as a security expert!
I worked on the Crypto Challenges a bit during my second RC batch, in late 2014, and learned some things -- grokked byte-level stuff better, learned about bytearrays, and I got some laughs out of the process too. Example: In challenge six, the Hamming distance the player calculates should be 37. First attempt: came up with 14. Next: 598. I literally laughed aloud. Then, when I finally got 37, I thrust my arms into the air with great vigor because I WAS A DEITY OF PURE LIGHT. But then I started getting depressingly wrong answers and kept getting them, and stalled out and got frustrated to the point of tears. I got help from friends, but decided to hold off and only look at one friend's potentially-spoilery explanation when I'm ready to come back, and I still haven't looked at it. Maybe on my next vacation.
posted by brainwane at 5:41 AM on October 17, 2016
I worked on the Crypto Challenges a bit during my second RC batch, in late 2014, and learned some things -- grokked byte-level stuff better, learned about bytearrays, and I got some laughs out of the process too. Example: In challenge six, the Hamming distance the player calculates should be 37. First attempt: came up with 14. Next: 598. I literally laughed aloud. Then, when I finally got 37, I thrust my arms into the air with great vigor because I WAS A DEITY OF PURE LIGHT. But then I started getting depressingly wrong answers and kept getting them, and stalled out and got frustrated to the point of tears. I got help from friends, but decided to hold off and only look at one friend's potentially-spoilery explanation when I'm ready to come back, and I still haven't looked at it. Maybe on my next vacation.
posted by brainwane at 5:41 AM on October 17, 2016
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posted by TheNewWazoo at 5:53 PM on October 16, 2016 [2 favorites]