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Cryptography

Cryptography relied on simple substitutions such as the Caesar cipher, which involved shifting letters several times. Slowly better methods emerged, such as the Vigenère cipher, which used a keyword to encrypt a message. Encryption became Better and harder to crack. The computer's power was increasing too, and encryption needed to get stronger. Eventually, asymmetric encryption was made to combat this.

Morse Code

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Morse code is a communication system that uses dots and dashes to represent letters and numbers. Morse Code messages are to used by sound, light, or any other way. To encrypt a message in Morse code, you translate each letter or number into its Dots and or Dashes. Decryption is easy to figure out you have to reverse the process by identifying the patterns of dots and dashes and matching them to the correct characters.

Example:

-. --- / --- ..- -. . / --- ..- - / .--. .. --.. --.. .- ... / - .... . / .... ..- -.

Random Substitution Cipher

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An encryption technique that maps each letter of the alphabet to a randomly chosen other letter of the alphabet. The receiver deciphers the text with the same substitution process to extract the original message. To decode it, you need to look for small words like one or two letters. one letter will be a or I, you will find what word is slowly decipher the words.

Examples:

Kraaz Sfg szh gsv yvhg kraaz

Importance of Public Key Encryption

The importance of public key encryption is to have safe and secure communications with someone online. So no private message can be accessed without having the key. Away of looking at this is through the mailbox analogy. A personal mail box deposit area that can only be accessed with a key which can be public where people can send you mail but only you can open the main part with a private key.

Hashing and Salting

Hashing is the practice of using an algorithm to map data of any size to a fixed length, This way of encryption is one of the best ways to protect your information because its a one way function meaning it can't be decoded. However, people with same passwords will have the same hash and can be cracked, but by salting. Salt is a random string of characters that is different for every user so it changes people with same passwords to have different ones, Making this impossible to decode even if a hacker gets a hold of the hash.

Website Created by Mac Butler, Student at The John Carroll School