Abstract
This chapter introduces the concept of cryptography, or mathematical codes used to protect data. It can be a tough concept. To help make this concept more comprehensible, this chapter covers some of the goals and requirements for cryptography. It then uses some historical examples to illustrate a subset of these principles. People have been using secret codes since before computers. These examples can be easier to understand but can also effectively introduce some concepts like key size, block size, brute force, block ciphers, stream ciphers, and cryptanalysis.
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Notes
- 1.
Obviously, the Roman alphabet was not exactly the same, but hopefully the idea is clear.
- 2.
While security through obscurity is largely viewed as harmful, there is still a debate about it [143].
- 3.
Although not shown here, there is a way of converting each permutation into a number so that it is easy to identify the key beyond just writing out the entire permutation.
- 4.
I am not endorsing clandestine communications between violent criminals. If this example causes you any moral consternation, you may consider the prisoner to be a political prisoner that protested against an ideology of your choice.
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Nielson, S.J. (2023). Cryptography Foundations. In: Discovering Cybersecurity. Apress, Berkeley, CA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-9560-1_4
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