Cryptography In A Common Language

If I tell you that what does the word “fdw” mean, you may think that this word may not have any meaning or at least you will try think of an acronym. In fact, you would be impressed if I tell you that word is exactly the same as the word cat. I am sure you would ask, how? If you take any letter and change its current sequence to the next three sequences in the alphabet order, you would get “cat” out of “fdw”. For example, c becomes f, a becomes d, and t becomes w. You may be wondering why this is useful. Well, imagine you want to communicate a secret message with someone else, and you cannot be guaranteed that your message would not be reviled to others on the way of getting to your friend. The previous technique, changing the sequence of the letters, was used by Cesar, the military commander, to ensure that only his generals can understand his messages. Messengers, enemy, intruders did not have any idea what were his messages saying. That way, he established the first what is known as encryption method. 

               So, you now may ask, what is encryption. In cryptography context, encryption is the method of converting meaningful texts into unreadable forms, so if any eavesdropper has access to the message, they would not get anything out of it. This technique simply avoids the involvement of the third party in the secret communications. 

               It is the time you ask how this can be achieved. How we can change our texts into scrambled forms that eventually this scramble text could be converted back into its original meaningful text. There are two main methods of encryption. One of them is associated with “key”. In this method, both parties share the same key, which is a standard that encrypts and decrypts the text. The Cesar’s method is this one. Both Cesar and his generals had the key. Cesar would encrypt his messages, scramble the text, and his general would decrypt, convert back the scrambled text into its meaningful text. That way, only Cesar and his generals could understand the core of the message. The second type is called hashing functions. In this method, a function changes the text into a hexadecimal value that it is impossible to understood by human beings. This function is one way, which means it is impossible to convert back the hashed value to the its original text. This method is mainly used in authorization process. When you login to your Facebook account this method is used. There is a hashed value of your password in the Facebook database because you have entered your password at the first place when you registered. As you enter your password, it is converted to a hash value, and it is compared to the hash value in the Facebook’s database. That way if your password was exploited to the thirds party, they would not be able to understand anything from it because it is a hashed value, not your plain password. 

               Now, you may be wondering to know what are other implementations of cryptography in technology. In the era of online communication, it is impossible to us to continue current technology processes without encryption and cryptography. Encryption is the de-facto methods to deal with authentication and authorization in the online processes. Therefore, when you ever enter your password in any place, think about encryption in the background. Online banking, e-commerce, online shopping, etc. all use encryption to ensure a secure communication within different platforms.

               Nowadays, we are surrounded with online authorizations. Facebook logins, online shopping, even entering learning systems within campuses are all there because of encryption. We frankly get to a point that if there is not encryption, there would not be any safe and secure online transaction, and we would not have reached this level of technology development.