Modern encryption is used in many applications and formats, including web-based email, messaging, voice over IP and video communications. It is also used to secure some of the most critical data on the Internet, such as credit card transactions and electronic medical records.<\/p>\n
The art of encryption is becoming increasingly important, but not because it protects your financial information while you’re shopping online. Rather, it has become a critical part of national defense strategies.<\/p>\n
Encryption basics: Encryption for beginners: A blog about modern encryption and what it does to protect information.<\/p>\n
Modern encryption can perform a variety of functions, but the most common is to conceal content. It’s used by militaries and intelligence services, businesses, terrorists and criminals, online gamers, political activists, journalists, the privacy-conscious public, and many others. While there are many types of encryption used for different purposes (and by different people), they all follow the same basic set of principles:<\/p>\n
Encryption uses mathematical functions to convert readable data into a form that isn’t easily understandable without a secret key.<\/p>\n
Encryption can be used with or without digital signatures to ensure that the message was not altered in transit and\/or that it came from a trusted source.<\/p>\n
Encryption can be used to store sensitive information in a way that protects it from unauthorized access.<\/p>\n
The Basics of Encryption<\/p>\n
To understand encryption better — what it is, how it works and why it’s important — let’s look at an example.<\/p>\n
The use of encryption and decryption has been a feature of secret communications throughout history, but it has only been since the 1970s that the use of modern ciphers has become widespread. This was largely due to the work of two men, Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman.<\/p>\n
This blog is intended to be an easy-to-follow introduction to cryptography for beginners. Cryptography is the science of encoding and decoding information, in order to make it secure against unwanted access. It is also used in many other applications, including authentication and digital signatures, where access or modification by unauthorized parties is not a factor.<\/p>\n
The idea of encryption has been around for centuries. Even before computers, people have used encryption to protect their secrets. Today, encryption protects our emails, our bank information, and more. This is a beginners guide to encryption so that you can understand how it works and what it does.<\/p>\n
Tutorial on Cryptographic Attacks<\/p>\n
All of the information here is for educational purposes only, to help you better understand encryption, and to let you know what you can do with it. The information on this site may be freely redistributed, provided that it is distributed in its entirety, without modification or removal of any text.<\/p>\n
So where do you begin?<\/p>\n
Decrypting data is done using a “key”; the process is known as decryption. The encryption of data is done using an “encryption key”; the process is known as encryption. Data can be encrypted and decrypted in several ways:<\/p>\n
Encryption Algorithms – These are mathematical formulas designed to encrypt and decrypt data; they are the most common way of encrypting data.<\/p>\n
Encryption Software – Encryption software does exactly what the name says; it encrypts data for you! It uses encryption algorithms or keys to encrypt your plain text into cipher text, which can then be decrypted by you at a later time. There are many types of encryption software available for free on the Internet for various platforms including Windows and Mac OS X.<\/p>\n
Encrypted File Systems – A file system is how a computer organizes and stores files on a disk drive (or other mass storage device). Encrypted file systems include whole disk encryption, disk<\/p>\n
In the present article we will discuss some of the most popular encryption algorithms that are in use today. We will examine their implementation, the way they function, the mathematics behind them and how they compare to each other.<\/p>\n
We will also discuss the future of encryption and what kind of techniques are being researched by scientists from all over the world.<\/p>\n
AES \u2013 The Advanced Encryption Standard<\/p>\n
The AES algorithm is an encryption standard that was developed by two Belgian cryptographers but was later also supported by American cryptographers as well. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) wanted to create a replacement for DES \u2013 the Data Encryption Standard. This is the algorithm which was used between 1977 and 2001 for protecting sensitive data like financial information. The idea was to choose a new algorithm that would be both faster and more secure than DES.<\/p>\n
The NIST began a competition where various algorithms were submitted and examined in order to determine which one would make a good replacement for DES. The algorithm that won this competition was Rijndael which was developed by two Belgian cryptographers \u2013 Joan Daemen and Vincent Rijmen. Their submission was chosen over submissions by RSA Security, IBM, NTT, Motorola, and others.<\/p>\n
In 1999 Rijndael became AES and it