Python 3.10

CryptoLab: Interactive Educational Platform Turns Cryptographic Protocols Course into Hands-On Alice, Bob and Mallory Experiments

A university instructor developed CryptoLab, an educational testbed that lets students run live cryptographic protocol experiments with active attackers instead of simple encrypt-decrypt exercises. The platform models the classic Alice-Mallory-Bob scenario where each participant runs as a separate application mode, allowing inspection, modification, dropping, and replay of packets. The first lab focuses on AES-GCM, AEAD properties, nonce reuse, replay protection, weak RNGs, key rotation, and metadata leakage. Students can operate in interactive mode to manually attack traffic or execute automated scenarios that verify expected security outcomes. Experiments demonstrate that modifying ciphertext triggers authentication failure and that a valid authentication tag does not guarantee message freshness without additional replay defenses. The tool also includes Python 3.10 assignments for correctly using cryptographic primitives rather than implementing algorithms from scratch. CryptoLab currently supports Windows x64 and macOS Apple Silicon builds and serves as the foundation for upcoming labs on symmetric encryption modes, asymmetric cryptography, key exchange, and TLS.