Essay draft.

"Cryptography is the science of transmitting information securely against potential third party adversaries."(Alyson Brown, 2020). It means cryptography is a method to prevent any steal of confidential data such as passwords or personal information. It can be used to secure the transmission of data between person and machine, for example, electronic chip in credit card.

The history of cryptography begins antiquity. In those times, the most used technique was encrypting. To prevent reading the messages by an unwanted person, people used a simply cyphers. For example, as Christopher McFadden mentioned in his article from 2018, Julius Cesar used the cypher, named after in his honour, to encrypt military orders and official messages.

Cryptography is an important part of the military. For every country is important to keep their military data protected against other countries, potentially opponents. In the past, breaking the encryption keys made a milestone point of wars. According to David Inman's article from 2020, breaking the Enigma (german encryption machine used during II World War) key was important in localising the U-Boats and destroying them. Between 1940 and 1943 the number of destroyed U-Boats was over 1100. Some estimates say, breaking Enigma key reduced the Wartime by over one year.

Nowadays, cryptography is unseparated part of daily life for many people. The article of Ryan Polk and April Froncek from 2019 claims that encryption seems like the part of science used only by spies, but a lot of people use it every day. For example, all of the popular messaging application use end-to-end encryption system. It is a standard, that websites use HTTPS security, which makes, following the moves on the Internet are more difficult to follow. Paying by credit card is able and safe because the connection between the credit card and card reader is encrypted.

In the computers era, many people "moving" their life to the Internet. One of the most basics, but the most important way to secure is creating passwords, which is encrypted as well. Patrick Nohe in his article from 2018 described the most common forms of encryption, which are Asymmetric Encryption and Symmetric Encryption. Asymmetric Encryption means, two sides of the connection have two different keys, one of them can only encrypt, and the second one can only decrypt. In that case, the encryption goes only one way. Symmetric Encryption means, two sides have both of the keys, which can encrypt and decrypt as well. The author mention that, both of the technologies are using by SSL protocol. The Asymmetric Encryption usually uses a 2048-bit length key. The Symmetric Encryption uses a 256-bit length key. However, it doesn't mean the Symmetric Encryption is weak. The author thinks the supercomputer will need thousand of year to decrypt it.

Cryptography exists and is using thousands of years. It was always present with milestone events of the world, for example, wars. Nowadays, even if people don't think about it, cryptography is unseparated of their life, make it easier and more secure.

 

References:

Brown, A., 2020. The Basics Of Cryptography. Medium. Available at: <https://towardsdatascience.com/the-basics-of-cryptography-80c7906ba2f7>

McFadden, C., 2020. 11 Cryptographic Methods That Marked History: From The Caesar Cipher To Enigma Code And Beyond. Interestingengineering.com. Available at: <https://interestingengineering.com/11-cryptographic-methods-that-marked-history-from-the-caesar-cipher-to-enigma-code-and-beyond> [Accessed 21 October 2020].

Inman, D., 2020. Rejewski & Enigma. London: Science Museum London. Available at: <https://www.cell.com/action/showPdf?pii=S2666-3899%2820%2930011-8> [Accessed 21 October 2020].

Polk, R. and Froncek, A., 2020. Your Day With Encryption | Internet Society. Internet Society. Available at: <https://www.internetsociety.org/blog/2019/10/your-day-with-encryption> [Accessed 21 October 2020].

Nohe, P., 2020. The Difference Between Encryption, Hashing And Salting. Hashed Out by The SSL Store™. Available at: <https://www.thesslstore.com/blog/difference-encryption-hashing-salting> [Accessed 21 October 2020].