Ever wondered how our everyday transactions are kept in
private? Such as signing in to our SNS accounts (social networking sites),
doing banking transactions, or sending confidential information in a company,
etc. especially nowadays with our ever changing and fast developing technology
it can’t be helped to wonder how do this things are kept private and
secured.
Especially with this thing called
“Internet” which is comprised of millions of interconnected computers and
allows nearly instantaneous communication and transfer of information around
the world people now depend on it for making transactions and communication.
The World Wide Web is now often use for online business, data distribution,
marketing, research, learning, and a myriad of other activities. Credit card
information, sss numbers, personal details, even bank information are sometimes
are inevitable to put when making online transactions so with
these people needed some assurance for the information they send and received
online is secured and protected. This is where cryptography comes
in, it makes secure web sites and electronic safe transmissions possible.
"A cryptographic algorithm, or cipher, is a mathematical function used in the encryption and decryption process.
A cryptographic algorithm works in combination with a key — a word, number, or phrase — to encrypt the plaintext. The same plaintext encrypts to different ciphertext with different keys."
When we talk about cryptography we would come
across the word encryption which is the process of encoding messages or
information in such a way that only authorized parties can read it. It uses a
code or a key to make the message hidden and to be able to read it.
And when talking about encryption, it’s important to make the distinction that all modern encryption technology is derived from cryptography
Starting off, cryptography is the
act of creating and (attempting to) decipher a code. While electronic
encryption is relatively new in the grander scheme of things, cryptography is a
science that dates back to ancient Greece and where soon followed by the
Romans.
The Greeks were the
first society credited with using cryptography in order to hide sensitive data
in the form of written word, from the eyes of their enemies, and the general
public.
They used and relied
on a tool called the scytale to create a transposition cipher (answer key) to
decode encrypted messages.
The scytale is
a cylinder used to wrap parchment around order to decipher the
code. Whenthe two sides communicating used a cylinder of the same
thickness, the parchment would display the message when read left to right.
When the parchment was unrolled, it would appear as a long, thin piece of
parchment with seemingly random numbers and letters.
While Romans introduced what commonly known as
the “Caesar’s cipher” which is a substitution cipher that involved substituting
a letter for another letter shifted further down the alphabet. For example, if
the key involved a right shift of three, the letter A would become D, the
letter B would be E, and so on.
Other breakthroughs are:
• The Polybius Square
• Enigma Machine
• Data Encryption
Standard
DES was the first modern symmetric key
algorithm used for encryption of digital data and was the foundation for which
modern encryption technologies were built.
Modern Encryption
Technology
Modern
encryption technology uses more sophisticated algorithms as well as larger key
sizes in order to better conceal encrypted data. The larger the key size,
the more possible combinations that a brute force attack would have to run in
order to successfully find decrypt the ciphertext.
Triple DES
Encryption
standards have come a long way since DES was first adopted in 1977. In fact, a
new DES technology, known as Triple DES (3DES) is quite popular, and it’s based
on a modernized version of the original DES algorithm. While the original DES
technology was rather limited with a key size of just 56 bits, the current 3DES
key size of 168-bits make it significantly more difficult and time consuming to
crack.
AES (Advance Encryption
Standard)
The Advanced
Encryption Standard is is a symmetric cipher based on the Rijandael block
cipher that is currently the United States federal government standard.
RSA Encryption
RSA is
one of the first widely used asymmetric cryptosystems for data transmission.
The algorithm was first described in 1977, and relies on a public key based on
two large prime numbers and an auxiliary value in order to encrypt a message.
ECC (Elliptic Curve
Cryptography)
Elliptic
curve cryptography is among the most powerful and least understood forms of
encryption used today. Proponents of the ECC approach cite the same level of
security with faster operational times largely due to the same levels of
security while utilizing smaller key sizes.
Public Key Encryption
Public Key – or asymmetric – encryption uses the recipient’s public key as well as a (mathematically) matching private key.
Public Key – or asymmetric – encryption uses the recipient’s public key as well as a (mathematically) matching private key.
Private Key Encryption
Where Private
Key – or symmetric – encryption differs from Public Key encryption is in the
purpose of the keys themselves. There are still two keys needed to communicate,
but each of these keys is now essentially the same.
Conclusion:
As we have
seen in the history of cryptography cryptographers creates new ciphers which
are unbreakable and cryptanalyst trying to break unbreakable cipher. Any
algorithm who creates cipher text and if it contains frequency of plain text
then it’s not considered to be secure.
Key
management is also very important aspect of the cryptography which in
overlooked by most of the organizations. Key should be stored in secure manner
and still should be accessible in easy way when required. Further, central key
management helps to apply common encryption policies across all devices and
data.
“ENCRYPT EVERYTHING”
is not the correct view and reasonable as well one cannot consider encryption
as a sole solution for all the security issues rather it should be based on
risk assessment and priority basis.
Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encryption
http://www.brighthub.com/computing/enterprise-security/articles/65254.aspx
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/encryption-care/
http://www.quotium.com/resources/importance-cryptography/
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