Top all-time · #1489
David Wong
Personal blog · cryptologie.net · on HN as babysecuritymathprogramming
David Wong's personal blog at cryptologie.net covers security, math and programming. Since 2013, 50 different Hacker News readers have linked it 182 times, most often “Why Not Rust for Security?”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-21, and you can follow it by feed.
David Wong writes about cryptography, security, and programming.
Most-linked posts?
- Why Not Rust for Security?4 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2020-09-21
- A history of end-to-end encryption and the death of PGP3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2020-01-02
- Alternatives to PGP3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2020-05-10
- Disco – mixing Strobe and Noise protocol frameworks3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2017-12-08
- Why I’m Writing a Book on Cryptography2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2020-07-05
- User Authentication with Passwords, What's SRP?2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2020-05-23
- On Doing Research2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2019-01-26
- /article/316/junipers-backdoor/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2017-08-08
- /article/466/developers-are-not-idiots/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2019-01-19
- The code is the specification? Introducing cargo spec2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-03-15
What Hacker News says?
I’ve started a podcast exactly for people like you: https://cryptologie.net/article/567/im-launching-a-podcast-t... They are 20min episodes that build up to explain the foundations of cryptocurrencies. If you have any suggestions for future episode let me know. I’m thinking of spending a bit more episodes on Bitcoin to talk about bitcoin scripts, layer 2 apps, UTXOs, etc. Before talking about ethereum
Comment linking /article/567/im-launching-a-podcast-two-and-a-half-coins/
on “The Ethereum merge is done”Submitted Let's Encrypt Overview as a story · 330 points
HN discussionI write about cryptography, mostly about resources that I think are missing. If I’m trying to learn something new and nobody has written a good explanation of it then I’ll write it! https://www.cryptologie.net Some examples of articles I've written: * A 4-part series on hash-based signatures https://www.cryptologie.net/article/306/hash-based-signature... * ASN.1 vs DER vs PEM vs x509 vs PKCS#7 vs .... https://www.cr…
Comment linking /article/466/developers-are-not-idiots/
on “Ask HN: What is your blog and why should I read it?”Submitted Why I’m Writing a Book on Cryptography as a story · 242 points
HN discussion[1] Tanya Khovanova, Soviet-American mathematician who became the second female gold medalist at the International Mathematical Olympiads. https://www.tanyakhovanova.com/ [2] Filippo Valsorda (cryptography) https://filippo.io/ [3] David Wong (cryptography) https://www.cryptologie.net/ [4] OpenBSD everything https://www.undeadly.org/ [5] blog with some funny articles https://idlewords.com/ [6] Might need a proxy/VPN…
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on “Ask HN: Favorite Blogs by Individuals?”Submitted EdDSA, Ed25519, Ed25519-IETF, Ed25519ph, Ed25519ctx, HashEdDSA, PureEdDSA, WTF? as a story · 153 points
HN discussionI use it for small projects/pages just because it looks so good :) http://cryptologie.net/links but I found it harder to get into compared to bootstrap/foundation.
Comment linking /links
on “Semantic UI”Submitted Cryptographic Signatures, Surprising Pitfalls, and LetsEncrypt as a story · 112 points
HN discussionA bit late, but I just wrote https://cryptologie.net/article/502/alternatives-to-pgp/
Comment linking /article/502/alternatives-to-pgp/
on “Ask HN: Keybase Alternatives?”Submitted Maybe we shouldn't skip SHA-3 as a story · 106 points
HN discussionI’ve been writing a book on cryptography called Real-World Cryptography[1] and targeting software engineers and students who are interested in applied cryptography. The book has already sold thousands of copies before even going in print (due to a blogpost I wrote on why I’m writing a book on cryptography[2]) which has added a lot of pressure on my plate. The book is almost done at this point, but revising and polis…
Comment linking /article/504/why-im-writing-a-book-on-cryptography/
on “Writing a book: is it worth it?”Submitted QUIC Crypto and simple state machines as a story · 80 points
HN discussionI don't buy the theory that the Web PKI or some equivalent is "unnecessary for non-Web things". If anything I think there have been a few places where there's a nasty security gap because somebody didn't just stuff the Web PKI in there, even though it wasn't necessarily a perfect fit, because what we got instead was nothing ie no security. An example of that first: Does your phone try to connect to SomeBrand WiFi ne…
Comment linking /article/467/quic-noise-nquic/
on “QUIC is now RFC 9000”Submitted What's the Deal with Zkapps? as a story · 77 points
HN discussionObligatory: https://cryptologie.net/posts/some-unrelated-rambling-about-...
Comment linking /posts/some-unrelated-rambling-about-counter-strike/
on “Counter-Strike: A billion-dollar game built in a dorm room”Submitted The missing explanation of ZK-SNARKs: Part 1 as a story · 77 points
HN discussionOh and check for low private keys as well, I did that before here's the code: http://cryptologie.net/article/265/small-rsa-private-key-pro...
Comment linking /article/265/small-rsa-private-key-problem/
on “Auditing GitHub users’ SSH key quality”Submitted Airbus crypto challenge write-up as a story · 68 points
HN discussionI’ll paste what I wrote in https://cryptologie.net/#article_555 The simplest abstraction is to see cryptocurrency / blockchain / distributed ledger technology as a database running on a single computer. Everybody can access this database and there’s some simple logic that allows you to debit your account and credit someone else’s account. The computer has a queue to make sure transactions are processed in order. Blo…
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on “Ask HN: Am I going insane or is there genuinely no value in blockchain tech?”Submitted Developers Are Not Idiots as a story · 56 points
HN discussionI just checked that myself, it is not the casting to uint64_t since the sign-extension happens even before that. The problem is that the result from the shift is stored in a register, which is probably 64-bit on your machine, and to do that it is sign extended from a signed int to a signed 64-bit value. Wrote more about that here: https://www.cryptologie.net/article/418/integer-promotion-in...
Comment linking /article/418/integer-promotion-in-c/
on “How I implemented my own crypto”Submitted How do modern zero-knowledge proofs, and PLONK specifically, work? (videos) as a story · 54 points
HN discussionIf you’re looking for a less mathy introduction to cryptography, and a more applied ressource, check the book Real-World Cryptography. It wrote it over the last two years and a half and it just got released on Amazon a few weeks ago. It teaches you about the cryptographic constructions that you run into all the time as a dev (https/ssl/tls, encryption, hashing, etc.) and gives you pointers on how not to mess things…
Comment linking /article/504/why-im-writing-a-book-on-cryptography/
on “A Graduate Course in Applied Cryptography”Submitted Dual EC or the NSA's Backdoor: Explanations [video] as a story · 48 points
HN discussionI have a crypto list here: http://cryptologie.net/article/227/keep-in-touch-with-crypto... although the list have grown since then, if you are interested I can update it.
Comment linking /article/227/keep-in-touch-with-crypto/
on “Ask HN: What tech blogs, podcasts do you follow outside of HN?”Submitted Kimchi: The latest update to Mina's zero-knowledge proof system as a story · 43 points
HN discussionhttps://www.cryptologie.net/article/274/lets-encrypt-overvie... They should use HSTS and redirects, though.
Comment linking /article/274/lets-encrypt-overview/
on “Let's Encrypt Overview”Submitted How do people find bugs? as a story · 41 points
HN discussionhttps://www.cryptologie.net
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on “Let's Encrypt Overview”Submitted Why I'm Writing a Book on Cryptography (2020) as a story · 35 points
HN discussion
