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- 1. How Encryption Works When we use the Internet, we're not always just clicking around and passively taking in information, such as reading news articles or blog posts -- a great deal of our time online involves sending others our own information. A typical transaction might include not only our names, e-mail addresses and physical address and phone number, but also passwords and personal identification numbers (PINs). Information security is provided on computers and over the Internet by a variety of methods.
- 2. • Security Encryption Systems • Computer encryption is based on the science of cryptography, which has been used as long as humans have wanted to keep information secret. • As long as both generals had the correct cipher, they could decode any message the other sent. • To make the message more difficult to decipher, they could arrange the letters inside the grid in any combination. • Most forms of cryptography in use these days rely on computers, simply because a human-based code is too easy for a computer to crack.
- 3. • Computer encryption systems generally belong in one of two categories: • Symmetric-key encryption • Public-key encryption
- 4. • Symmetric Key • Just like two Spartan generals sending messages to each other, computers using symmetric-key encryption to send information between each other must have the same key. • In symmetric-key encryption, each computer has a secret key (code) that it can use to encrypt a packet of information before it is sent over the network to another computer. Symmetric-key requires that you know which computers will be talking to each other so you can install the key on each one. Symmetric-key encryption is essentially the same as a secret code that each of the two computers must know in order to decode the information. The code provides the key to decoding the message.
- 5. Caesar's Cipher • Julius Caesar also used a similar substitution technique, shifting three letters up. If he wanted to say "CROSSING THE RUBICON," for instance, he'd write down "FURVV LQJWK HUXEL FRQ" instead. As you can see, the text is also broken up into even groups in order to make the size of each word less obvious. • Think of it like this: You create a coded message to send to a friend in which each letter is substituted with the letter that is two down from it in the alphabet. So "A" becomes "C," and "B" becomes "D". You have already told a trusted friend that the code is "Shift by 2". Your friend gets the message and decodes it. Anyone else who sees the message will see only nonsense.
- 6. SSL and TLS • A popular implementation of public-key encryption is the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL). Originally developed by Netscape, SSL is an Internet security protocol used by Internet browsers and Web servers to transmit sensitive information. SSL has become part of an overall security protocol known as Transport Layer Security (TLS).
- 7. Hashing Algorithm • The key in public-key encryption is based on a hash value. This is a value that is computed from a base input number using a hashing algorithm. Essentially, the hash value is a summary of the original value. The important thing about a hash value is that it is nearly impossible to derive the original input number without knowing the data used to create the hash value.
- 8. Authentication • As stated earlier, encryption is the process of taking all of the data that one computer is sending to another and encoding it into a form that only the other computer will be able to decode. Another process, authentication, is used to verify that the information comes from a trusted source. Basically, if information is "authentic," you know who created it and you know that it has not been altered in any way since that person created it. These two processes, encryption and authentication, work hand-in-hand to create a secure environment.