Governments, militaries, banks and corporations rely on it. It’s responsible for securing most, if not all of your personal and financial data. There are special CPU instructions for it. It is the only cryptographic algorithm approved by the NSA.

We’re of course talking about the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), the most commonplace and secure symmetric encryption algorithm yet developed.

This will be the longest article we write for the time being 😊. We’re going to take a deep dive into how this algorithm works. Modern cryptographic algorithms are by no means trivial; they use concepts from advanced mathematics to achieve…

In our many articles about how the internet works, we left out an important detail. Many common internet-facing applications secure data before it’s sent out into the world. But how? With an ingenious protocol known as TLS.

What is TLS?

In the olden days of the internet, communication was completely unencrypted. This meant that eavesdroppers could potentially see all of the data sent over the internet. People had to be very careful when sending sensitive information.

This problem was recognized as early as 1994, so the SSL (Secure Socket Layer) protocol was developed. SSL encrypts data at one endpoint and decrypts it at…

In our last article, we talked about TCP and UDP, the protocols that handle the delivery and verification of data sent over the internet. In this article we will shift our focus to hardware: how is data passed between devices?

Ethernet and Fiber Optics are probably terms you’ve heard before, maybe in advertisements or skimming through E-Bay. You may already know that they have something to do with wired communication. But what are they really, and why is Fiber Optics all the rage now? This article will help you understand!

What is Ethernet?

Ethernet is a protocol for wired communications. It is most…

This is another entry in a series of articles in which we talk about the fundamentals of how the internet works. We started with switches and routers and moved onto a bird’s eye view of the entire network stack.

In this article we will take a closer look at what is known as the Transport Layer (Layer 4) in the OSI model. This is the layer that segments, verifies and controls the flow of information between computers, and assigns various connections to ports. While Layer 4 is commonly associated with TCP (Transmission Control Protocol), there are other protocols that can…

In our last article we talked about switches and routers, two of the basic building blocks of the internet. In that article we mentioned that wires, switches and routers comprise the first three “layers” of a larger internet stack.

Today, we will zoom out and discuss what the other layers are up to Layer 7. We will analyze a message sent across the internet and witness its journey through all these layers.

OSI model

Let’s go over the OSI model first. The OSI (Open Systems Interconnection) model consists of seven “layers of the internet.” They are named:

• 1) Physical
• 2) Datalink
• 3)…

Switches and Routers are essential hardware pieces for the foundation of a network. In the beginning stages of the development of the computer, the need arose for computers to be able to talk to each other. Two computers were connected by a wire, and gradually, multiple computers were connected by switches and routers.

In this article, we will talk about Switches and Routers, how they work, and their differences.

First, to understand the development of Switches, we will take a look at hubs.

Hubs, the outdated switches

Hubs are a predecessor of switches that became outdated for good reason. Let’s say we have a…

A honeypot is a decoy target that attracts cyber attacks, distracting hackers from other important targets, and learns about how hackers do what they do.

In this article, we will discuss different types of honeypots and how they can help your business.

How honeypots work

A honeypot is supposed to imitate a real system that a hacker might want to attack. It is a fake system that doesn’t have any real data worth anything that the hacker can steal. If a honeypot is hacked, no real damage is done. In fact, the goal of a honeypot is to attract hackers to attack it.

…

There are lots of things that need to be done to ensure the security of a system or network. Sometimes this process can be long, tedious, and confusing to set up for yourself. Oftentimes you will need a professional to handle things for you.

Here we will provide 3 easy to use tools that you can use right now to improve the security of your system. They will help increase your awareness of cybersecurity and will also be fun to set up.

Canary Tokens

Canary Tokens are things that can inform you if your system has been broken into. Think…