How to get more familiar with cryptography?
I studied cryptography in an academic setting (and currently doing more advanced courses around it) and I work on software that directly deals with crypto operations. However, it feels like there's a disconnect between my understanding of crypto and its appearance in real-life situations.
Are there any ways to somehow bridge this gap?
I've been suggested to try out playing with FPGAs, implementing algorithms there (even knowing they'd be poor with lots of side-channel leaks etc).
My understanding and interest for crypto came by reading "Singh Simon : The Code Book". This book tells the history of cryptography from Persians to quantum computing. Great and surprisingly easy read with great historical stories and presents every idea which leads to today's hashes and private/public key pairs.
I can recommend the book Serious Cryptography by Jean-Philippe Aumasson. I also concur with the suggestion of cryptopals for training exercises.
I recommend Cryptography Engineering for a more practical view that still provides a lot of good theory and info about modern cryptography.
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