Wednesday, May 23, 2012

The History of Cryptography


A very mysterious and interesting history of Cryptography, started in 2000 B.C. in Egypt. When hieroglyphics (designating or pertaining to a pictographic script, particularly that of the ancientEgyptians, in which many of the symbols are conventionalized, recognizable pictures of the things represented) were used to decorate coffin or chambers inside the kingdom which represents the life story of any deceased.


The intention of hieroglyphics technique was not much about hiding the message, rather it was used to make life story seem more noble, ceremonial, and majestic. 


 "The Mummy" and "The Mummy Returns" are the best examples of these ciphers, you can also have a look on "National Treasure" Where Nicholas cage is resolving a secret of a historical treasure by decryting a map.


Encryption methods evolved from being mainly for show into practical applications used to hide information from others.


Pretty old, A Hebrew cryptographic method required the alphabet to be flipped so each letter in the original alphabet was mapped to a different letter in the flipped, or shifted alphabet.


The encryption method was called Atbash which used to hide the true meaning of message. Let's go through an example to learn it quickly.


An Atbash cipher for the Latin alphabet would be as follows:
 Plain:  abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
 Cipher: ZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA


An easier, simpler and faster way of doing this is:
 First 13 letters: A|B|C|D|E|F|G|H|I|J|K|L|M
 Last 13 Letters:  Z|Y|X|W|V|U|T|S|R|Q|P|O|N


For example, in Atbash, the letters "nlmvb" indicate the word "money".


Stay tuned, I will resume this article tomorrow.