Encryption means to scramble data in such a way that only someone with the secret code / key can read it.
IS IT NEW? Encryption has been around for thousands of years in various forms. For example in Ancient Greece the story goes that a general wanted to send a secret message back to his city, so he had a soldier's head shaven and the message written on his scalp. Soon enough his hair grew back enough to hide the message and was sent off running to the city. When the soldier arrived, the city official knew the secret 'key' i.e. shave his head to reveal the message.
Today, encryption is far more sophisticated, but it serves the same purpose - to pass a secret message from one place to another without anyone else being able to read it.
Research examples of how encryption is used.
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Types of Encryption
Reverser
Reverses the whole message. So when the message is encrypted it will appear backwards. However when using this type of encryption if someone looks at the message long enough they will soon realize that it is a message written backwards.
Shifter
In this type of encryption letters are moved by one so a becomes b and b becomes c and so forth. However this is one of the weaker types on encryptions.
Flipper
This is when every two characters are flipped. That is, the 1st and 2nd letters are switched, the 3rd and 4th letters are switched, the 5th and 6th letters are switched, and so on.
Caesar Cipher
Each letter in the plaintext is replaced by a letter some fixed number of positions down the alphabet. For example, with a shift of 3, A would be replaced by D, B would become E, and so on. The method is named after Julius Caesar, who used it to communicate with his generals.
Public key
The use of a single key to send messages to an individual. This key cannot decrypt a message, only encrypt it.
Encryption is a method by which any kind of message such as an email, banking, or any other personal information, becomes encoded so they are illegible to anyone other than the intended person without a special deciphering of the code, with a special key or a code. This form of security is necessary to handle the privacy of all personal and private information that passes through from one computer to another. Information such as data or messages that are sent is regarded as plain text until that information is encrypted and then is labeled as cipher text.
There are two types encryption schemes; public key or symmetric key.
Public key encryption allows two keys to be used with a user, a public key, and a private key. The public key is given by your computer to any other computer that it communicates with. Then, to decode a message a private key given to a specific individual user is used along with the public key.
Another encryption is the symmetric key.
Symmetric key only uses one key that is a secret between your computer and the other one you are communicating with.
Most computer systems use both the public key and symmetric key encryption today.
The examples of encryption are:
Online banking
When you visit online banking's sign-on page, your browser establishes a secure session with their server.
The secure session is established using a protocol called Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) Encryption. This protocol requires the exchange of what are called public and private keys.
Keys are random numbers chosen for that session and are only known between your browser and their server. Once keys are exchanged, your browser will use the numbers to scramble (encrypt) the messages sent between your browser and our server.
Both sides require the keys because they need to descramble (decrypt) messages received. The SSL protocol assures privacy, but also ensures no other website can "impersonate" your financial institution's website, nor alter information sent.
E-mail
You can encrypt an email by using any key required to encrypt and decrypt the message. The key required for encryption and encryption is the same.
Data encryption is the switching of letters or binary code so that no unauthorized user can see and use the data. A decryption code/key is needed in order for the information to be read correctly again.
Instead of just encrypting documents, e-mails can now be encrypted at home and in the work place. The typical type of encryption for e-mails is PGP (pretty good privacy) encryption. PGP encryption binds the encryption key to a user name or e-mail address. This is supposed to minimise that ability to hack into the information.
Transfer of data has to also be encrypted. Wireless encryption encrypts the data as it is traveling from your computer to the wireless access point, when it is traveling in the airwaves. The wireless encryption is still susceptible to hackers but does provide more security than if the data was traveling without any encryption.
The basic steps to authentication between a client and an access point are:
• The client sends an authentication request to the wireless access point
• The wireless access point sends some challenge text back to the client
• The client uses a pre-configured 40-bit or 128-bit shared key to encrypt the challenge text
• The client sends the encrypted text back to the wireless access point
• The wireless access point decrypts the encrypted text sent by the client using the same pre-configured shared key
• The access point compares the decrypted text with the challenge text that was originally sent
• If the two text strings match, the access point authenticates the client and the client then sends an association request to access point; if the two text strings do not match, then the access point will refuse to authenticate the client
Online banking
When visiting online banking's sign-on page, your browser establishes a secure session with our server.
The secure session is established using a protocol called Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) Encryption. This protocol requires the exchange of what are called public and private keys.
Keys are random numbers chosen for that session and are only known between your browser and our server. Once keys are exchanged, your browser will use the numbers to scramble (encrypt) the messages sent between your browser and our server.
Both sides require the keys because they need to descramble (decrypt) messages received. The SSL protocol assures privacy, but also ensures no other website can "impersonate" your financial institution's website, nor alter information sent.
To learn whether your browser is in secure mode, look for the secured lock symbol at the bottom of your browser window.
More examples of where its used:
Supermarkets
Emails
Used for "digital signatures" to authenticate the origin of messages or data
Protecting files and databases
Julius Caesar used it to communicate with his generals through encryption by using the Ceaser Cipher
Encryption – Winzip
Winzip is file compression software which incorporates an encryption method.
The main purpose and use of the program is to compress a group of files for faster and easier transfer of data – whether it may be via a memory stick or electronic mail. This is done as a result of conserving storage space and reducing download times.
While compressing the files, the software also encrypts the data to ensure that only the person or group of people supposed to obtained the data do so – preventing the issue of unauthorised people who have got their hands on the data, being able to view it.
ENCRYPTION
Web browser and email encryption
Web browsers for example internet explorer automatically encrypt data when they connect to a secure server – this is identified by an address beginning with https. The server decrypts the data when it arrives, but as the information travels between computers the data is scrambled into a non-readable format.
Encryption programmes can be used to encrypt emails. The oldest of these is a military-grade program called 'Pretty Good Privacy', which allows users to encrypt email messages, personal files and folders.
File Encryption:
Users who want to restrict access to a file will often use the built-in capabilities of the application to apply some form of password protection, but even then, these applications aren’t necessarily designed with data security as their primary purpose and have been shown to be breakable.
To ensure the safety of data, it's has become more or less an accepted practice to encrypt data with an industry standard encryption method.
Some solutions are as simple as saving the file to an encrypted file archive or encrypted disk image or folder using a strong password (using utilities such as WinZip while other solutions can be as complex as using a public/private key pair to ensure that only a single individual can read the file (using utilities such as PPG).
You have shared a very nice detail about this technique. After learning so much about the process of encryption I would like to know about the application where it is used.
digital signatures
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