Is your first thought when thinking about cryptography, “nope, that’s not for me!”? There’s no need to. When explained with simple examples, you can see the basics are not that complicated. The Javascript Object Signing and Encryption, or JOSE for short is a framework that helps us deal with encryption. It describes ways to securely transfer data either signed (JWS) or encrypted (JWE). Let’s take a leap of faith and explore the wonderful world of cryptography together, shall we?

In this talk, I will try to explain the basics of encryption and hashing through simple examples. We’ll look into how the JOSE standard can help us with encrypted content on the web using JSON Web Encryption (JWE) and JSON Web Keys (JWK). The audience does not need any specific knowledge about cryptography as this talk will go through the basics. Some JavaScript knowledge can be useful but not necessary as code examples will be simple and explained.

Why? The times when websites were just simple pieces of information is long gone. These days the web handles more sensitive data than ever before. To securely handle this data, we sometimes need to hash, encrypt or sign it. Sure there are a million tools, libraries and pieces of software that handle this for you, but knowing the basics can certainly come in handy!