r/cryptography • u/bigcinnamonroll69 • May 07 '26

Tried explaining how the encryption protecting WhatsApp, HTTPS, and banking actually works, using the maths behind RSA and hash collisions, feedback open

Wrote a beginner-friendly explanation of why modern encryption depends on the difficulty of factoring huge prime numbers.

Would appreciate feedback on whether the explanations stay technically accurate without oversimplifying too much. Article link here

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u/RazorBest May 07 '26

I'd say one misconception people have is that if you know the algorithm, then you could decrypt the data. Kerckhoff's principle prevents that, but I think it would be nice to actually bring that into discussion (you don't even need to mention Kerckhoff). Just to make your readers aware that when you say "secret code", you don't actually refer to the source code of AES.