An Interactive Journey Through Cryptography and Security
A grand castle (your app) sends messengers through a glowing tunnel (the internet). Each messenger carries a sealed chest (the encrypted data). The castle's security inspector — the ethical hacker — walks the tunnel, checking locks, keys, and guards.
Three ways an enemy might break into the sealed chests. Click each to explore:
An enemy army tries every key from a huge pile until one opens the chest. If the lock is small or simple, they win.
A rival scholar finds a secret trick to break the lock's puzzle instead of trying keys one-by-one — like factoring the king's special number (RSA) or solving the curve riddle (ECC).
A spy sneaks into the castle, copies the key, finds it under the doormat, or listens to guards (side-channel). Or the royal scribe uses weak randomness and writes predictable keys.
Meet the master craftsmen who forge the castle's locks and keys. Click to see them work:
AES — Fast, strong iron key used for the chest itself.
RSA — Big prime-based seal
ECC — Small but mighty curved-engraved key
Diffie–Hellman / ECDHE — Two messengers perform a handshake ritual to create a fresh travel key for this trip.
Watch the messengers travel through the tunnel, carrying their sealed chests...
Ten guard stations protect the tunnel. Click each checkpoint to inspect it:
Burn the crumbling bridge (no SSL). Only use new bridges (TLS 1.2/1.3).
Replace rusty locks with modern ones (AES-GCM, ChaCha20).
Every messenger gets a unique sealed chest key — if one chest is stolen, others remain safe.
Every chest bears the king's signed scroll; check it's genuine and not expired.
Watch for strangers trying to stand between messenger and castle; don't let them swap messages.
If a key is broken, it's posted on the guardboard — guards refuse the old key.
Close every window so no one can pass an unsealed note into the tunnel.
Store master keys in the royal vault, rotate them, and only let trusted officers touch them.
Patch cracked stones (update OpenSSL and libraries) so no secret passage exists.
Make townsfolk only accept sealed chests (HSTS) and sometimes pin a particular king's seal so impostors fail.
See a glowing tunnel with ten lit guard booths. Each booth tests a different part of the chest — lock, seal, messenger, or vault. Green lights mean safe; any red light stops the messenger and triggers fixes.