What is Cryptography
/ October 13, 2017

Cryptography is an indispensable tool used to protect information in computing systems. It is used everywhere and by billions of people worldwide on a daily basis. It is used to protect data at rest and data in motion. Cryptographic systems are an integral part of standard protocols, most notably the Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol, making it relatively easy to incorporate strong encryption into a wide range of applications. While extremely useful, cryptography is also highly brittle. The most secure cryptographic system can be rendered completely insecure by a single specification or programming error. No amount of unit testing will uncover security vulnerability in a cryptosystem. Cryptography Overview The word cryptography comes from the Greek words κρυπτο (hidden or secret) and γραφη (writing). Oddly enough, cryptography is the art of secret writing. More generally, people think of cryptography as the art of mangling information into apparent unintelligibility in a manner allowing a secret method of unmangling. The basic service provided by cryptography is the ability to send information between participants in a way that prevents others from reading it. This kind of cryptography can provide other services, such as Integrity checking—reassuring the recipient of a message that the message has…

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