2024-01-02 17:10:00
Cryptography has become quite popular in recent years behind social networks and cryptocurrencies. In practice, it involves a set of elements capable of encoding a message, making attackers have difficulty reading its content.
Although it has become better known recently, the concept that created it has existed since the time of Ancient Rome. However, due to modern needs, what we see is that encryption is increasingly necessary.
Understanding more regarding encryption
Encryption means transforming data into a code so that unauthorized people cannot access it. For a long time, this was a practice only used by the government and in war situations — and, for this reason, most people were not aware of it.
Nowadays, as most data is shared on the internet, from medical records to banking transactions, using encryption has become a necessity. Just like other products, this technique can be of different types.
According to this ExpressVPN article, the company, which works with a virtual private network, uses the AES-256 encryption standard, that is, a 256-bit cryptographic key to convert plain text. This is one of the strongest patterns that exist and, to break it, it would be necessary to use supercomputers for an incalculable amount of time.
The first encrypted code
It is believed that it was from the 7th century onwards that humanity began to use codes to hide messages. According to historical records, the Spartans developed a tool called a scytal — a type of wooden stick with parchment wrapped around it.
To encode, people wrote on the parchment while it was wrapped around the stick. Afterwards, it was not possible to understand what was written, requiring the use of another cytal of the same size to reveal the content. Today, the technique does not seem as advanced as those that already exist, but at the time it represented a great advance, especially for war objectives.
In turn, Caesar began using a cipher to exchange messages in 58 BC. The cipher replaced each letter with another and, although it was easy to reveal, it was used by the Russians in the First World War.
In the 15th century, the Italian architect Alberti perfected Caesar’s idea, creating a cipher with letters and numbers. Furthermore, the tool he created included two discs, which made it a little more difficult to get to the message.
The most similar encryption to what is currently found dates back to the 19th century. Because of creation of the telegraph, which revolutionized communication, governments became more concerned regarding privacy. The result was progress in the creation of techniques and codes to prevent content from being intercepted.
During the First World War, the code adopted to communicate privately was knitting. Belgian grandmothers were stationed at train stations and signaled what was happening, at the same time as they made clothes. As this trick became known, governments took measures to prevent something similar from happening in World War II.
The Enigma machine is also from the 20th century, which changed the history of computing and can be seen in film “The Imitation Game”. Created by Alan Turing, it worked like a puzzle for exchanging secret messages. In addition to changing the course of the war, the equipment allowed cryptographic development in the digital age.
In the 1970s, the concept of a public key was created, which allows messages to be shared without having to use a private key — which, in practice, works like a password. Since then, technology has gone through many advances until it became what it is.
For the future, the expectation is that quantum computing will add an additional layer of challenge to cryptography. This is because more powerful computers will require increasingly sophisticated tools to prevent their invasion.
As you can see, although it has come a long way, cryptography still has a lot to evolve. In any case, it will continue to be a great ally of data and communications privacy.
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