The history of encryption seems like an unlikely story to fascinate so many people. It is a history of the development of a means to protect information over the internet. In the earliest days, encryption was used by governments and military factions. Then it was extended to ordinary people.

Today encryption is used every day by people all over the world. It is also used by every major business and corporation in the world. Encrypted communication, storage and transactions are commonplace in our modern lives.

Encryption is a process that encodes data in such a way that only authorized parties can read it. Encryption is used for everything from securing military communications to protecting bank transactions, credit card purchases and access to health care records.

Encryption is the process of converting information into a form that is not easily understood by anyone except the intended recipient. The simplest form of encryption is to just avoid plain text. This can be done by writing notes in English and then translating them into a different language before they are sent, or even by using shorthand or other systems for creating non-standard forms of communication.

Cryptography has been used for centuries to protect information from being accessed by unauthorized individuals. The most well known example is probably the Enigma machine in which letters were encoded through electrical wiring so that the original letter was completely scrambled throughout the message. Even though this specific system was eventually cracked it served as an important step in the development of modern day encryption techniques.

In more recent years methods such as public/private key encryption have become some of the most favored ways to protect information online. In a nutshell, public/private key encryption works like this: when someone sends you a message, they encrypt it with your public key which only you can decrypt because only you have access to your private key (which is needed to decrypt messages). If someone steals your public key they cannot decipher the message unless they also have access to your private key.

An important aspect of public/private key systems is that once you

Encryption is a way to transform information in such a way that it can only be read if you have access to a secret key. The transformation is called a cipher.

The best known example of an encryption technology is probably the codes used during World War II to send secret messages between allied leaders. The allied forces commanders would not have been able to defeat the Nazis if they had not been able to communicate with each other. Even today, encryption technology is used daily by businesses and governments to protect their secrets.

T he history of encryption goes back thousands of years, but the first methods were very weak by modern standards, and could be broken without much effort. Over time, cryptography, the science of securing information with encryption, has evolved into a highly sophisticated discipline, with many different technologies available.

Even today, as information becomes more critical to business and government, there are still new challenges in creating secure encryption methods and systems. It was only in the last decade that anyone cracked the de facto industry standard for protecting DVDs from piracy: the Content Scramble System (CSS).

The central idea behind encryption is simple: information should be easy to access and hard to change. Encrypted data is encoded in a way that only authorized parties can read or modify it. Encrypted communication, for example, utilizes two keys; one public key for sending messages and a private key for receiving them.

TECHNOLOGICAL BASICS

Encryption uses algorithms to convert readable, plain text into an unreadable format called ciphertext. The reverse process is called decryption. Each algorithm has a corresponding cipher that can decipher the message back into plain text.

The strength of an encryption system depends on the strength of its algorithms, which are measured by their key length. To date, the strongest publicly known encryption algorithm is Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), which uses 128-bit and 256-bit keys to encrypt and decrypt data.

The more complex the algorithm, the longer it will take to encrypt/decrypt data with a given key length. A complex algorithm with a 256-bit key will be stronger than one with a 128-bit key, but it will also take longer to encrypt/decrypt the data.

Encryption is the process of encoding messages or information in such a way that only authorized parties can read it. Encryption does not hide or conceal the original message; rather, it is used to ensure that the only people who can read a message are those for whom it is intended. The primary method used to encrypt information is called substitution cypher.

A substitution cypher replaces the letters of the plaintext with other characters, large numbers, or symbols. Each letter in the code represents another letter in the alphabet. For example, a code that replaced each letter with the letter that comes after it in the alphabet would be a simple substitution cypher. Substitution ciphers have been used for hundreds of years and are still used today.

The earliest known use of a cipher was by Julius Caesar, who used an encryption system to help him communicate with his generals during military campaigns. In his system, he replaced each letter with another one three positions down the alphabet from it (e.g., A = D, B = E, C = F). This method became known as “Caesar’s cipher” and was widely used for centuries after his death.

Where does encryption come from?

Encryption is the process of encoding data to make it unreadable by anyone who doesn’t have a key. Encryption is used in many applications, from securing websites to protecting email messages.

The word “encryption” comes from combining the words “encipher” and “cipher.” Encipher means to convert text or data into an encrypted form. Cipher means any set of symbols used for encryption.

“Today’s encryption technologies, while not perfect, are reputable and widely used.”

The classified memo in question was intended to warn policymakers that any Snowden leak of the agency’s surveillance capabilities would put at risk its program of monitoring terrorists and other intelligence targets overseas. The agency wouldn’t confirm or deny that it had a program to do so, but Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said in a statement Wednesday that any such effort would be aimed at protecting information and ensuring the security of government computer networks.

Specifically, the NSA uses public encryption standards — endorsed by the administration — to foil eavesdropping overseas. This just shows how important it is for them to protect their secrets from folks like Snowden and Manning. The memo never claims Snowden’s leaks have led to vulnerabilities or harm. But it does say that the Chinese have stolen secrets from U.S. systems and that American companies may have been forced to assist with these thefts because of Snowden’s leaks.

Folks who know more about this than I do tell me the basic point here is correct: the NSA is trying to protect secret data on U.S. systems by using public encryption standards on overseas systems. That way, even if China steals information off of U.S. systems, they won’t be able to read