These are just a few quick updates to explain what I am doing with the blog.

Firstly,  regular readers may notice that I have a new blog banner image, which was kindly designed for me by a friend who wishes to remain anonymous for now. I think it looks a lot better than the old styled header, and it makes the template I’m using a bit more unique.

Secondly, I’m going to change the format of the blog somewhat. Until now, I’ve mostly focused on long detailed articles, from explaining security concepts, to creating lists of recommended browser add-ons, to even attempting to refute academics and professionals. The problem is that these articles take a lot of time to research and write, and my free time for doing them is limited by both my work and my university studies.

On the other hand, I subscribe to a lot of security feeds and mailing lists, and will occasionally tweet about various things that I come across. So I’ve decided to adapt this habit, and instead of just tweeting about something, I will give it a short write-up on this blog. Sometimes I may just put a link and a short comment, other times I may write a couple of paragraphs. Whatever I do, you’ll still get to read some good content that you may have missed elsewhere on the web. I tried a similar thing back in January and February with “Cryptogasm Quickies”, but instead of doing a single post with multiple items, you’ll get a post per item.

This isn’t to say that I will never write in-depth articles again; on the contrary, I have a few that I am working on, but instead of the blog feeling inactive for days (and sometimes weeks) on end whilst I work on them, I will provide small amounts of content to keep you all up to date with various pieces of security news and views.

Thirdly and finally (and nothing to do with the blog), I am attending the Infosecurity Europe 2012 convention on Wednesday 25th April. If anyone else is going, let me know via twitter and perhaps we can meet up for a drink.

Welcome to Cryptogasm, a new blog about Information Security, a subject that is very important in our data-centric world, and something that should be a high priority for anyone who uses a computer (although sadly in most cases this is not the case). On the blog I shall talk about my own work, as well as update you all with the latest security related news, and endeavour to explain some of the more complex issues of Information Security in a way that is both informative and easy to understand.

So who am I? Well, my name is Adrian Hayter, and I’m currently working on an MSc in Information Security from the prestigious Information Security Group at Royal Holloway, University of London. I graduated from the same university in July of 2010 with a BSc in Computer Science (Information Security), so I’d like to think I know at least something about the vast subject that is Information Security.

I have been interested in codes and cryptography for many years prior to my university education though, and one of my earliest memories is helping my father write a computer program (in Visual Basic) that encrypted messages using a simple Caesar Cipher. Since then, I have taken an active role in learning about security, whether through messing around on the command-line, or taking part in hacking challenges.

For my BSc dissertation, I implemented SAML tokens on Android phones to demonstrate how they could be used to protect one’s privacy over a network, and for my MSc thesis, I am investigating the future of passwords.

So stay tuned, subscribe to my feed, and I hope you enjoy the blog!