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What Is Cryptography?

Andy wants to securely communicate a private message to his friend Sam. Cryptography is used to encrypt messages so they can only be read by the intended recipient. Andy converts his message into an unreadable ciphertext using an encryption key. Even if the message is intercepted or altered in transit, Sam can decrypt it using the key and detect any changes, ensuring the private communication is secure. There are different categories of cryptographic algorithms, including symmetric which use a shared key, and asymmetric which use public/private key pairs.

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I2414 Hafiz Muhammad Zeeshan E1
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69 views5 pages

What Is Cryptography?

Andy wants to securely communicate a private message to his friend Sam. Cryptography is used to encrypt messages so they can only be read by the intended recipient. Andy converts his message into an unreadable ciphertext using an encryption key. Even if the message is intercepted or altered in transit, Sam can decrypt it using the key and detect any changes, ensuring the private communication is secure. There are different categories of cryptographic algorithms, including symmetric which use a shared key, and asymmetric which use public/private key pairs.

Uploaded by

I2414 Hafiz Muhammad Zeeshan E1
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Cryptography

Let’s say there’s a person named Andy. Now suppose Andy sends a message to his


friend Sam who is on the other side of the world. Now obviously he wants this
message to be private and nobody else should have access to the message. He
uses a public forum, for example, WhatsApp for sending this message. The main
goal is to secure this communication.

Let’s say there is a smart guy called Eaves who secretly got access to your
communication channel. Since this guy has access to your communication, he can
do much more than just eavesdropping, for example, he can try to change the
message.  Now, this is just a small example. What if Eave gets access to your private
information? The result could be catastrophic.

So how can Andy be sure that nobody in the middle could access the message sent
to Sam? That’s where Encryption or  Cryptography comes in. Let me tell you ” What
is Cryptography “.

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What Is Cryptography?
 Cryptography is the practice and study of techniques for securing
communication and data in the presence of adversaries. 

Alright, now that you know ” what is cryptography ” let’s see how cryptography can help
secure the connection between Andy and Sam.

So, to protect his message, Andy first convert his readable message to unreadable


form. Here, he converts the message to some random numbers. After that, he uses
a key to encrypt his message, in Cryptography, we call this ciphertext. 

Andy sends this ciphertext or encrypted message over the communication channel,


he won’t have to worry about somebody in the middle of discovering his private
messages. Suppose, Eaves here discover the message and he somehow manages to
alter it before it reaches Sam.
Now, Sam would need a key to decrypt the message to recover the original
plaintext. In order to convert the ciphertext into plain text, Sam would need to use
the decryption key. Using the key he would convert the ciphertext or the numerical
value to the corresponding plain text.

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After using the key for decryption what will come out is the
original plaintext message, is an error. Now, this error is very important. It is the
way Sam knows that message sent by Andy is not the same as the message that he
received. Thus, we can say that encryption is important to communicate or share
information over the network.

Now, based on the type of keys and encryption algorithms, cryptography is


classified under the following categories:

Encryption Algorithms
Cryptography is broadly classified into two categories: Symmetric key
Cryptography and Asymmetric key Cryptography (popularly known as public key
cryptography).
Now Symmetric key Cryptography is further categorized as Classical Cryptography
and Modern Cryptography.

Further drilling down, Classical Cryptography is divided into Transposition Cipher


and Substitution Cipher. On the other hand, Modern Cryptography is divided into
Stream Cipher and Block Cipher.

So, let’s understand these algorithms with examples.

How various Cryptographic Algorithms Works?


Let’s start with the Symmetric key encryption

Symmetric Key Cryptography

An encryption system in which the sender and receiver of a


message share a single, common key that is used to encrypt and
decrypt the message. The most popular symmetric–key system is
the Data Encryption Standard (DES)
Transposition Ciphers

 In Cryptography, a transposition cipher is a method of encryption


by which the positions held by units of plaintext (which are
commonly characters or groups of characters) are shifted
according to a regular system, so that the ciphertext constitutes a
permutation of the plaintext. 
That is, the order of the units is changed (the plaintext is reordered).
Mathematically, a bijective function is used on the characters’ positions to encrypt
and an inverse function to decrypt.

Example: 

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