Wow sounds like a heck of a lot of ground to cover in 2 weeks! Intro to programming + cryptography. Geez...

I would be thinking about starting at some place far easier than MD5. A book on the history of cryptography could be helpful. It been a decade since I read a book like that and my memory is fuzzy.

Anyway, I would be thinking of starting with simple substitution cyphers, like ROT13 and variants. Some basic probability math would be appropriate with this subject.

I could envision a number of fairly simple programs to help break a code like that which could be done within the time frame that you have.

I forget the names of many early ciphers, but these things that used various lookup tables, etc. are implementable with basic programming. If you have to get into low level details like binary polynomials, then the basics of what that is and how to program that could overwhelm the students. There is a limit to what you can do in your 1/2 of the 2 weeks.

How say DES works, could be a lecture, but I doubt a student could go from "ground zero" to working code in 2 weeks, even with the algorithm clearly spelled out.

Update: you could have some fun with the Unix password encryption system.

In reply to Re: Perl Cryptography - Seeking Resources by Marshall
in thread Perl Cryptography - Seeking Resources by ljamison

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.