Understanding Cryptography

Cryptography is the art and science of protecting information. It involves techniques for encoding and decoding messages to ensure confidentiality, integrity, and authenticity. It's a cornerstone of modern security, used in everything from securing online transactions to protecting sensitive government communications.

Key Concepts

• Encryption: Transforming readable data (plaintext) into unreadable format (ciphertext).
• Decryption: The reverse process of converting ciphertext back to plaintext.
• Key Management: Securely generating, storing, and managing cryptographic keys.
• Hashing: Creating a unique, fixed-size representation of data. (Note: This is different from encryption)
• Symmetric-key cryptography: Uses the same key for encryption and decryption.
• Asymmetric-key cryptography: Uses a pair of keys - a public key for encryption and a private key for decryption.

Types of Cryptographic Systems

There are various cryptographic systems, including:

• AES (Advanced Encryption Standard): A widely used symmetric encryption algorithm.
• RSA: A popular asymmetric encryption algorithm.
• Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC): Increasingly used for its efficiency.