Sessions at RubyConf 2011 about Cryptography with video

Thursday 29th September 2011

• Better Than ROT13

  by Bradley Grzesiak

  We use encryption every day, from SSL to SSH to passing notes to your crush during Social Studies class. But how does it actually work? I'll avoid most of the math but cover the concepts of both symmetric and asymmetric encryption, including hashing and signing. I'll also show how to use OpenSSL from inside ruby and show off the idkfa gem, a library to securely store sensitive information into your code repositories.

  • Cryptography
  • OpenSSL
  • Ruby

  At 4:20pm to 5:15pm, Thursday 29th September

  Coverage video

Friday 30th September 2011

• Ruby OpenSSL: Present, Future and why it matters

  by Martin Boßlet

  We will start with an overview of what exists today (Ruby 1.9.3) in Ruby's OpenSSL wrapper and how and where you can use it and why you should. After this brief introduction we will encounter new features that could find their way into future versions of Ruby OpenSSL.

  Among these is OpenSSL::ASN1::Template, a DSL that allows parsing/encoding ASN.1 structures with simple declarations that look similar to ASN.1 itself. We will find out why I finally decided to ditch a working implementation in pure Ruby just to replace its majority with C code - including the lessons learned about performance.
  Another feature would be XML signature support (OpenSSL meets Nokogiri) and a clean solution to finally stop people from using OpenSSL::SSL::VERIFY_NONE by making certificate validation less of a pain while still improving the security.

  Finally I'd like to revive a concept that never really found broad acceptance although it would largely increase the trustworthiness of our beloved gems - *digitally signed* gems.

  • Cryptography
  • OpenSSL
  • Ruby

  At 11:15am to 12:00pm, Friday 30th September

  Coverage video