Computer Cryptography: Code - A Set of Information That Will Allow Words To Be Changed To Other Words
Computer Cryptography: Code - A Set of Information That Will Allow Words To Be Changed To Other Words
Computer Cryptography: Code - A Set of Information That Will Allow Words To Be Changed To Other Words
Cryptology is defined as the science of making communication incomprehensible to all people except those who have a right to read and understand it. It can also be defined as a technique used to hide the meaning of a message and is derived from the Greek word kryptos (hidden). If a message were to fall into the hands of the wrong person, cryptography should ensure that that message could not be read. Typically the sender and receiver agree upon a message scrambling protocol before hand and agree upon methods for encrypting and decrypting messages. The study of cryptology consists of two parts: Cryptography, which concerns itself with the secrecy system itself and its design, and Cryptanalysis, which concerns itself with the breaking of the secrecy system above. Below are some useful terminologies:
Code - a set of information that will allow words to be changed to other words or symbols, For instance, a code for the word rifle may be escargot. That is not the type of cryptography that lends itself to analyze. The only way to decode a message is by having the set of words and their codes. If someone is able to get his hands on the codebook, then every secrecy message can be broken. We are interested in methods of cryptography that lend themselves to explainable techniques that can be performed to change a message into a secret one, and, more importantly, change back by people having the authorization and knowledge to do so.
Plaintext - the message that you wish to put into a secret form. Plaintext is usually written in all lower case letters without spaces. Numbers are written out and punctuation is ignored. So the message I will meet you at 5 PM in the mall is written as: iwillmeetyouatfivepminthemall
Ciphertext - the secret version of the plaintext. So the plaintext: iwillmeetyouatfivepminthemall may be changed to: NBNQQRJJYDTZFYKNAJURNSYMJRFQQ
Encipher - changing from plaintext to ciphertext Decipher - changing from ciphertext to plaintext Key - information that will allow someone to encipher the plaintext and also decipher the ciphertext
There are two main types of cryptography: Secret key cryptography Public key cryptography Secret key cryptography is also known as symmetric key cryptography. With this type of cryptography, both the sender and the receiver know the same secret code, called the key. Messages are encrypted by the sender using the key and decrypted by the receiver using the same key. This method works well if you are communicating with only a limited number of people, but it becomes impractical to exchange secret keys with large numbers of people. In addition, there is also the problem of how you communicate the secret key securely. Public key cryptography, also called asymmetric encryption, uses a pair of keys for encryption and decryption. With public key cryptography, keys work in pairs of matched public and private keys. The public key can be freely distributed without compromising the private key, which must be kept secret by its owner. Because these keys work only as a pair, encryption initiated with the public key can be decrypted only with the corresponding private key. The following example illustrates how public key cryptography works:
Ann wants to communicate secretly with Bill. Ann encrypts her message using Bills public key (which Bill made available to everyone) and Ann sends the scrambled message to Bill. When Bill receives the message, he uses his private key to unscramble the message so that he can read it. When Bill sends a reply to Ann, he scrambles the message using Anns public key. When Ann receives Bills reply, she uses her private key to unscramble his message.
Data Encryption Standard (DES): The most common SKC scheme used today, DES was designed by IBM in the 1970s and adopted by the National Bureau of Standards (NBS)
Advanced Encryption Standard (AES): In 1997, NIST initiated a very public, 4-1/2 year process to develop a new secure cryptosystem for U.S. government applications. The result, the Advanced Encryption Standard, became the official successor to DES in December 2001.
RSA: The first, and still most common, PKC implementation, named for the three MIT mathematicians who developed it Ronald Rivest, Adi Shamir, and Leonard Adleman. RSA today is used in hundreds of software
products and can be used for key exchange, digital signatures, or encryption of small blocks of data.
Digital Signature Algorithm (DSA): The algorithm specified in NIST's Digital Signature Standard (DSS), provides digital signature capability for the authentication of messages.