Portal:Cryptography

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Cryptography Wikiportal

Cryptography (from Greek kryptós, "hidden", and gráphein, "to write") is, traditionally, the study of means of converting information from its normal, comprehensible form into an incomprehensible format, rendering it unreadable without secret knowledge — the art of encryption. In the past, cryptography helped ensure secrecy in important communications, such as those of spies, military leaders, and diplomats. In recent decades, the field of cryptography has expanded its remit in two ways. Firstly, it provides mechanisms for more than just keeping secrets: schemes like digital signatures and digital cash, for example. Secondly, cryptography has come to be in widespread use by many civilians who do not have extraordinary needs for secrecy, although typically it is transparently built into the infrastructure for computing and telecommunications, and users are not aware of it.

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Featured article edit

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Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) is an obsolete scheme to secure wireless networks (WiFi). Because a wireless network broadcasts messages using radio, it is particularly susceptible to eavesdropping. It is based on the stream cipher RC4. An attack has been discovered and it is now considered as extremely weak. The most widely recommended solution to WEP security problems is to switch to WPA (using a tweak called TKIP) or WPA2 which is based on AES. Either is much more secure than WEP. Another alternative is to use a tunneling protocol, such as IPsec. If WEP use must be retained for some reason, keys should be random and changed frequently, even daily.

Other featured articles: Caesar cipher & Data Encryption Standard — Enigma machine — ROT13 — Voynich manuscript

Featured picture edit

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Bruce Schneier, designer of Blowfish, author of several books about cryptography and security.

Did you know... edit

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...that the Pigpen cipher was used by the Freemasons for correspondence and record keeping?
...that Polish mathematician Marian Rejewski deduced the wiring of the German Enigma machine in 1932 using theorems about permutations?

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...that acoustic cryptanalysis is a type of attack that exploits sound in order to compromise a system?
...that one scheme to defeat spam involves proving that the sender has performed a small amount of computation: a proof-of-work system?

Miscellaneous edit

WikiProject Cryptography
Project digest for February 2005
Project digest for March 2005
WikiReader in Cryptography
Automatic link: Recent changes in articles about cryptography
Topics in cryptography — an annotated list of cryptography topics

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From 14 August 2005–18 August 2005 the 25th Annual International Cryptology Conference CRYPTO 2005 took place in Santa Barbara, California, USA. At the rump session, an improved collision attack on SHA-1 was announced.
RSA-200 was factored on 9 May 2005. At 663 bits (200 decimal digits), the number is the largest of the RSA numbers yet factored.
The US Secret Service is reported to be using 4,000 of its computers in a distributed dictionary attack to solve passwords used to protect encryption keys [1]. They report particular success in crafting custom dictionaries based on knowledge of a suspect's personal interests.
In Australia, the Vigenère cipher is being used to communicate with an extortionist via the advertisements in a newspaper [2].