# nakov/Practical-Cryptography-for-Developers-Book

Practical Cryptography for Developers: Hashes, MAC, Key Derivation, DHKE, Symmetric and Asymmetric Ciphers, Public Key Cryptosystems, RSA, Elliptic Curves, ECC, secp256k1, ECDH, ECIES, Digital Signatures, ECDSA, EdDSA

Repository: https://github.com/nakov/Practical-Cryptography-for-Developers-Book
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/practical-cryptography-for-developers-book
Homepage: https://cryptobook.nakov.com
Language: CSS
License: MIT
License Family: permissive
Topics: cryptography, tutorial, book, programming, elliptic-curves, ecdh, aes, digital-signature, asymmetric-ciphers, public-key-cryptography, quantum-safe-cryptography, hashes, kdf, hmac, key-agreement, python, elliptic-curves-cryptography, ecc
Last push: 2024-06-07T09:01:50+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 32/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-02T17:46:02.011165+00:00)
- activity 0, release rhythm 35, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 2869, "days_push": 817, "days_rel": null, "gap_med": null, "n_releases_24m": 0}
- flags: no_releases
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 3824, forks 470 (observed 2026-08-28T04:08:22.075954+00:00)

## What it is
A free, open-source book by Svetlin Nakov teaching practical cryptography for developers, covering hashes, MACs, key derivation, key exchange, symmetric and asymmetric ciphers, ECC, digital signatures, and quantum-safe cryptography with code examples. It is hosted online via GitBook and written primarily in Python examples.

## Use cases
- learn how AES-GCM and authenticated encryption work
- understand elliptic curve cryptography and ECDH key exchange
- learn how ECDSA and EdDSA digital signatures work
- understand password hashing and key derivation functions like Argon2
- get an introduction to quantum-safe cryptography
- find cryptography libraries and code examples for Python and other languages

## When to choose
- you are a developer wanting a practical, code-driven introduction to cryptography concepts
- you need a free reference explaining hashes, MACs, KDFs, ciphers, and signatures
- you want worked examples in Python before using crypto libraries

## When to avoid
- you need a formal mathematical cryptography textbook
- you need a finished, complete reference - the book is still unfinished
- you need a crypto library to use in production rather than learning material

## Facets
- artifact type: learning-resource
- maturity: active
- function: cryptography, security, documentation, developer-tools
- domain: security, developer-tools, tutorials, education
- platform: cross-platform, python
- tags: cryptography, book, tutorial, hashes, hmac, key-derivation, aes, ecc, ecdsa, digital-signatures, quantum-safe-cryptography, free-book, web-server

## Member repositories
- nakov/Practical-Cryptography-for-Developers-Book (main) score 32

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:08:22.075954+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-29T18:26:23.105447+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/nakov/Practical-Cryptography-for-Developers-Book (fetched 2026-08-28T04:08:22.075954+00:00, sha 8cd509b39708)
  - homepage: https://cryptobook.nakov.com (fetched 2026-08-29T09:21:04.536010+00:00, sha a38b5af7c534)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.