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A Stick Figure Guide to the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES)

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Resurfaced independently across 12 calendar years, with breakout response in 3 of them.

submissions
24
submitters
16
observed span
2009–2024
peak thread · 24 comments
267 pts
latest 20+ return · 2022-02-03
70 pts

Submission timeline

2007–2026

One slot for every year since HN launched. Height is that year's peak points; orange marks a 100+ point or 50+ comment breakout. Select a bar to open its strongest thread.

First comments on top threads

HN comment order

I was a bit surprised to wake up and find this on Hacker News again! I had no idea how popular (~340k+ views) this post would become when I wrote it two years ago. I wrote it out of frustration after reading the Rijndael book that I linked too. I saw a very beautiful algorithm that was mainly obscured in academic-ese. Some general thoughts looking back at my post two years later: * I drew every cell with a sheet…

Favorite part: "Foot-Shooting Prevention Agreement: I, (your name), promise that once I see how simple AES really is, I will not implement it in production code even though it would be really fun. This agreement shall be in effect until the undersigned creates a meaningful interpretive dance that compares and contrasts cache-based, timing, and other side channel attacks and their countermeasures. (Signature) (Date)" That being said, for my PHP+MySQL bretheren: http://phpseclib.sourceforge.net/…

My favorite slide: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Zfbv3mHcYrc/Sre5JqBKZyI/AAAAAAAABn...

lucb1e·137-point thread·

This is GREAT. Does anybody know of / have a collection of explainers like these? I've made a few myself: - How Cryptography Works https://gun.js.org/explainers/data/security.html - How distributed systems work (Master-Slave vs P2P, CAP Theorem, CRDTs, etc.) https://gun.js.org/distributed/matters.html Has anybody made their own / have some good ones to add?

The first top-level comment from each of the four biggest threads, in HN’s own order. Excerpts are shortened; open a comment for full context.

Breakout years
3

100+ points or 50+ comments

Total points
767

reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking

Total comments
56

reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking

Every submission

DateTitle as submittedByPointsComments
2009-09-22A Stick Figure Guide to the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES)First breakoutmoserware1788
2011-08-18A Stick Figure Guide to the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES)Best threadllambda26724
2011-11-282009: A stick figure guide to the Advanced Encryption Standard bootload20
2012-02-03A Stick Figure Guide to the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) b-man10
2013-02-23A Stick Figure Guide to the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) (2009)rburhum10
2013-08-31A Stick Figure Guide to the Advanced Encryption Standard (2009)angersock1378
2015-10-28A Stick Figure Guide to the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES)Tomte10
2015-12-09A stick figure guide to AES Encryption – ELI5c-slice20
2016-09-26A Stick Figure Guide to the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) (2009)adamnemecek30
2016-09-26Stick Figure Guide to the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) (2009)adamnemecek10
2016-11-06A Stick Figure Guide to the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) (2009)Tomte20
2017-03-18A Stick Figure Guide to the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) (2009)Tomte30
2017-06-22A Stick Figure Guide to the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) (2009)Tomte20
2017-10-16A Stick Figure Guide to the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) (2009)beefhash10
2017-10-26A Stick Figure Guide to the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) (2009)Tomte10
2017-11-10A Stick Figure Guide to the Advanced Encryption Standard (2009)petethomas10
2018-03-31A Stick Figure Guide to the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) (2009)Tomte832
2020-02-17A Stick Figure Guide to the AES - Advanced Encryption Standard (2009)guiambros10
2020-04-13A Stick Figure Guide to the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES)rkraaijenhagen20
2021-01-08A Stick Figure Guide to the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) (2009)Tomte10
2021-07-15A Stick Figure Guide to the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES)federicoponzi40
2021-08-09A Stick Figure Guide to the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) (2009)Tomte10
2022-02-03A stick figure guide to the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) (2009)Latest 20+ point returnropable7014
2024-02-29A Stick Figure Guide to the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES)_kb20