Is Hex needed for cracking?

[AusHacker]

Hi all,
I'm kinda new to IT though I've been learning C++ for about 2 months and have come across hexadecimal and binary. At first they looked confusing but now they aren't too hard to understand. I've learned to convert hex to decimal which I found really cool.
But my actual question, is large amounts of knowledge of Hex, Binary and other numerous bases needed for cracking and encryption, etc...?They seem quite necessary from my experiences in Basic 6 (the one with the encryption script thing).

[ghost107]

Yep combine them with some knowledge of ASM, doing some bitwise operation, etc, will help a lot in making tools, reading streams, figuring out an encryption, etc.

Still Hex its not hard to learn, its like learning how to count to 15 in base 16.

[pretentious]

is large amounts of knowledge of Hex, Binary and other numerous bases needed for cracking and encryption, etc...?

Everything done on a computer is in binary and is only converted to decimal for our convenience(hex is kind of man and machine meeting half way ). Though i recon you pretty much have it figured out, there isn't much to it. Just be prepared to be like "oh it's in hex(or binary), i will convert it to base 10 to make meaning of it"

[LoGiCaL__]

Also frequency analysis can help or just seeing how typing something in that script changes when it is encrypted.

[FunctionCreep]

Also frequency analysis can help or just seeing how typing something in that script changes when it is encrypted.

Yep, one of the most common mistakes in cipher implementations is using the wrong kind of mode for the specific application.

For example, the use of ECB mode with a static key in eg. DES can reveal patterns of encrypted data reducing the complexity of the algorithm.

Hi all,
I'm kinda new to IT though I've been learning C++ for about 2 months and have come across hexadecimal and binary. At first they looked confusing but now they aren't too hard to understand. I've learned to convert hex to decimal which I found really cool.
But my actual question, is large amounts of knowledge of Hex, Binary and other numerous bases needed for cracking and encryption, etc...?They seem quite necessary from my experiences in Basic 6 (the one with the encryption script thing).

All in all though knowing how to read binary, is of a less importance than knowing the actual math behind the algorithms. Sure you get implementation errors from a programmatic point of view, but if the ciphers used are correctly implemented then you are pretty much screwed unless you know some top-secret backdoor to an algorithm.

Very few possess any useful cryptanalytic skills. And bruteforcing your way around an modern algorithm should take you kind of a loooooong time :p