CST 311 Weekly Journal #4

 Weekly Journal

This week, I learned the principles of network security and how to use encryption methods like symmetric and public key systems. It was interesting to learn how cryptography is used not only for privacy but also for things like authentication and digital signatures. I also learned how email security works and how SSL/TLS helps protect data on the transport layer. In addition, setting up a certificate authority and issuing digital certificates in Mininet was a good hands-on experience for me and I was having a little bit of trouble, but eventually, I figured it out. On top of that, I worked on a programming assignment to create a multi-threaded client-server chat program, which gave me some valuable practice with concurrency and networking. I also took the Midterm Exam and got a pretty decent score, but after I realized I may need to study harder and longer for the final exam to fully grasp everything we’ve covered so far. All in all, this week was very informative and not too time-consuming because we had a midterm so I was happy to get a tiny little break.