Public encryption described via paint blobs

Video explains Diffie-Hellman with rope, clocks and color mixing

By Keith Shaw

February 27, 2012, 10:15 AM —

I love videos that can explain difficult concepts with simple ones, such as this video that talks about the Diffie-Hellman key exchange, one of the "earliest practical implementations of key exchange within the field of cryptography," as well as the concept of the discrete logarithm. How do they do it? Paint blobs, rope and clocks.

Still, for the traditionalists out there, the video also talked about prime number and modal math, which went a bit over my head, but look! Paint blobs!

Read more of Keith Shaw's ITworld.TV blog and follow the latest IT news at ITworld. Follow Keith on Twitter at @shawkeith. For the latest IT news, analysis and how-tos, follow ITworld on Twitter and Facebook.

Follow Keith on Google+

Keith Shaw writes the Cool Tools column for Network World, and is the Multimedia Content Editor for IDG Enterprise, responsible for editorial video and audio content creation. Follow him on Twitter @shawkeith.