![]() ![]() We’ll take a page out of Caesar’s playbook and go with a shift cipher. Let’s take a look at encryption using a simple cipher. It was extraordinarily useful though, making any information intercepted by Caesar’s opponents practically useless.Ī couple thousand years later, a nomenclator cipher – a type of substitution cipher that swaps symbols for common words in an attempt to avoid a decryption technique called frequency analysis – got Mary Queen of Scots beheaded and a bunch of conspirators killed when their messages were intercepted and deciphered by a literal man (men) in the middle. Caesar used a primitive shift cipher that changed letters around by counting forward a set number of places in the alphabet. As did Caesar, whose cipher stands as one of the most important examples of encryption in history. The ancient Egyptians used a simple form of encryption. Since then there have been countless historical examples. ![]() It dates back to at least 1900 BC after the discovery of a tomb wall with non-standard hieroglyphs chiseled into it. ![]() But as you’ll see, an algorithm is really nothing more than a set of rules–and they can actually be pretty simple.Įncryption has a long, storied history. I realize the word algorithm has kind of a daunting connotation because of the scars we all still bear from high school and college calculus. The algorithm can also be called the encryption key. To encrypt data you use something called a cipher, which is an algorithm – a series of well-defined steps that can be followed procedurally – to encrypt and decrypt information. This is a key distinction between encryption and hashing (forgive me the pun). When you encrypt something, you’re doing so with the intention of decrypting it later. Along the way we’ll also cover salting, since it’s in the news almost every single time a password database gets compromised.Įncryption is the practice of scrambling information in a way that only someone with a corresponding key can unscramble and read it. So, today let’s talk about the difference between encryption and hashing – and answer any questions you may have been too afraid to ask. All kidding aside, if you pay any attention to the world of cybersecurity you’re likely to hear these terms bandied about. ![]()
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