A Closer Look At Cryptography Essay -- Writing Cryptography History Pa

A Closer Look At Cryptography Ever since the earliest days of writing, people have had reasons to limit their information to a restricted group of people. Because of this, these people have had to develop ideas of making their information unable to be read by unwanted people. The general techniques used to hide the meaning of messages constitute the study known as cryptography. "Ciphers, in general fall into three major classifications: 1. Concealment Cipher, 2. Transposition Cipher, and 3. Substitution Cipher" (4). Cryptography protects information by altering its form, making it unreadable to unwanted people or groups of people. Cryptography, from the Greek kryptos, meaning hidden, and graphei, meaning to write. The origins of secret writing can be traced back nearly four millennia to the hieroglyphic writing system of the Egyptians. References to cryptography are also made in the bible. "One of the oldest known examples is the Spartan scytale: Plutarch tells how Lacedaemonian generals exchanged messages by winding narrow ribbons of parchment spirally around a cylindrical staff. The message was then inscribed on the parchment. When the ribbon was unwound, the writing could be read only by the person who had a cylinder of exactly the same size, upon which to rewind it, so that the letters would reappear in their normal order" (5). During the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, interest in cryptography was very high. It was the custom in those days for important people, such as Mary of Stuart, the Charles I and II, and the Georges, to have private ciphers. During the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries, cryptology played a major role in the military, especially in WWI and WWII, because the sec... ...rom the National Energy Supply to Fort Knox. This is a fairly similar situation to that of WWI and WWII, in that whoever has control of the other side’s information, is in control of the war. I also think the challenge of trying to break someone else’s codes, a game of sorts, is very interesting. Works Cited: 1. "History of the Enigma." Russell Schwager. 18 Nov. 1998. <www.ugrad.cs.jhu.edu/~russell/classes/enigma/history.html> (12/8/99). 2. "The History of the German Enigma." Lech Maziakowski. 4 Dec. 1997. <www.members.aol.com/nbrass/enigma.htm> (12/8/99). 3. "RSA (Rivest-Shamir-Adelman)." Fred Hazan and Frank Rundatz. 4 Dec. 1999. < http://www.whatis.com/rsa.htm> (12/ 10/99). 4. Gaines, Helen Fouche. Crytanalysis. New York: Dover, 1956. 5. Smith, Laurence Dwight. Cryptography. New York: Dover, 1955. 6. Peer Reviewer: Adam Fackler