Research Paper on Cryptography and Hacking

Introduction

Cryptography and hacking are nothing new. They have been utilized by various individuals and cultures in many events to safeguard and gain unauthorized data in transit or at rest respectively. Cryptography according to Scarani & Christian (27), is defined as the process of transmitting or storing data in a specific manner to ensure only the required parties can process and read it. Cryptography can secure a date from alteration or theft and ensure its authentication. On the other hand, Denning (203), defined hacking as an illegal intrusion into a network or a computer by identifying their weaknesses and misusing it to gain their access. The earliest type of cryptography started in 1900B.C in Egypt. It was exclusively focused on transforming different messages into unreadable clusters of figures to protect the actual message when transmitting it from the sender to the recipient. It was initiated when Egyptians began utilizing hieroglyphs, particularly, in non-standard style, probably to hide the meaning of the messages from individuals who did not recognize it. The most common technique was Caesar Shift Cipher which was later advanced by Gilbert Vernam and other groups such as Navajo. In the contemporary world, cryptography has experienced abroad adoption with a digital signature as its basis. This essay explores cryptography by examining how both the ancient and modern cryptographies performed, how the hacker gained their access and recommended solutions and preventions to this problem.

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Ancient Cryptography

Among the ancient cryptography is the Scytale. It was used in 500BCE by Spartans during the war. They sent protected messages during war battles which were wrapped on a piece of parchment. They had the intended message around some form of cylinder known as Scytale. In order to decode the message, the recipient was required to have a cylinder with a similar diameter as the original used. This form of cryptography succeeded although hackers who had cylinders of the same size could decode the message before it got to the intended receiver. Additionally, head tattoos were another type of cryptography utilized in the ancient era. It was initially used by a Greek leader who sought to rebel against Persian king. He tattooed various conspiratorial communication on the head of a slave and gave hair his hair time to grow, he was later sent to various revolting leaders to initiate a rebellion (Hiwarekar, 26). Even though the king finally won the attack, this form of cryptography appeared to work. However, the waiting time of growing hair was long which delayed recipient of the desired message. Hackers who understood this method attacked these salves during their transportation to various destinations and shaved their head to precisely read and understand the messages.

The famous Caesar cipher cryptography developed by Julius Caesar established a simple structure to convey protected information to his soldiers in the war. His idea was about replacing some letter with others through moving them by a predetermined amount. The most common number employed was three. After his invention worked, numerous cipher keys have been developed and protected. If one required decoding the message, he had to have cipher keys to perform this. Hackers took advantage of this concept by utilizing various cipher keys (Hiwarekar, 29). Additionally, this technique did not work for larger messages which involved much time to decrypt messages. There were additional devices known as Enigma machines, recognized as cipher machines. They were commonly used by Nazis during the Second World War and were composed of electronically-linked rotors. This type of cryptography did not work since different messages were decrypted using a set of daily keys which were additionally difficult to crack (Sanyal, & Parthasarathy, 1307). This made it impossible for hackers to gain entry into messages sent since the entire operation proved unbreakable.

Modern Cryptography

Modern cryptography is considered as the art and science of ensuring data is secure from unauthorized parties. It is considered as a part of mathematics incorporated as cryptanalysis. It utilizes complex mathematics algorithms, equations, and secret keys to decode and encode data (Gupta & Vinod, 638) The modern cryptography was developed to offer integrity and secrecy to various types of data as well as both anonymity and authentication to communications. Interests of the various industry have stirred the upsurge demand for cryptography. For instance, financial services needed to protect electronic transactions and enterprises required to safeguard trade secrets kept in a computer database. There are various types of modern cryptography.

Symmetric-Key Cryptography

It encompasses a single key which is utilized in both encrypting and decrypting data hence the term symmetric. To decode data or message while utilizing symmetric-key cryptography, one should first choose a cipher (Koblitz & Alfred, 5). The most commonly used cipher is known as AES cipher because it is readily available and is secure. A key is then developed to initiate the process of sending a message. This form of cryptography requires the sender to recognize the PC to send the message to make sure the key is installed in it to decrypt the message once sent (Gupta & Vinod, 638) It is similar to a secret code which both computers should know to decrypt the information.

Public-Key Cryptography

It is also known as asymmetric encryption due to use of two keys which are either private or public keys. Private keys belong to the sender who stores them confidentially to avoid unauthorized access while the public keys are kept open for every interested party to view them (Koblitz & Alfred, 8). They are linked mathematically connected centered on the type of cipher utilized with the most famous being RSA cipher suite. The cipher is used in a manner that private key acts as the only key which may decode what can be encoded by the public key while the public key acts as the only key which may decrypt the message that the private key can code (Kuppuswamy & C. Chandrasekar, 0976)

Cryptanalysis

It is the investigation of ciphers, ciphertext, and systems to comprehend the hidden meaning and system's details. There are numerous universal methods and traits employed to solve the cipher systems and various codes (Koblitz & Alfred, 10). Additionally solving a cipher requires solving an encrypted data which is written in an unfamiliar language entirely impossible to comprehend. This is an advancement of cryptography used by Navajo during the Second World War. It requires a cryptanalyst to know the redundancy of a language which makes the encryption easier. They search for patterns within ciphers to identify common letter pairings and words. Hackers use this concept to gain entry into the message by understanding various languages' redundancy that helps them to decode the message and understand its meaning.

Cryptographic Primitives

This is well-organized, low-degree cryptographic algorithms which are regularly employed to create cryptographic procedures for PCs security structures. Developers utilize cryptographic primitives when creating cryptographic structures as their fundamental building components. Due to this, they are used to perform a particular activity in greatly reliable manner. For example, where encryption appears to be delicate with Y amount of PC activities and where it may be broken into lesser Z activities, then cryptographic primitive is termed as failed. Where this is the case, approximately every protocol that primitive cryptographic employs end up being vulnerable to hackers. Because developing cryptographic consumes much time, it is not sensible to make new cryptographic primitive hence they do not work to satisfy the needs of cryptographic structures.

Hacking in Modern Cryptography

Currently, approximately half of web traffic is encoded which additionally drags a big downsize. Most hackers are also utilizing encryption to perform their spasms which it difficult to detect them amongst a torrent of encrypted traffic. The most common types of protocols used by the majority of hackers in the modern cryptography are Transport Layer Security and Secure Sockets Layer which are increasing drastically. In a research conducted by Sanyal and Parthasarathy (1303), reveal that only 35% of organizations were confidence to identify and mitigate hacking attempts in their systems. Additionally, hackers utilize security gaps in modern cryptography which are established by historical data encryption techniques. It encompasses decoding data which ushers path for hackers to steal essential information from a network or computer system.

Solutions

Big firms are adopting new anti-tamper solutions which will secure the whole of their application and preserve the integrity of code to evade hacking. One of the most common approaches employed is arming all applications with unique self-protection system which inputs numerous checks in the root code of the potential intended application making the application strong. This technique decreases the hacking speed since the checks must be removed manually to make application security absolute (Creech & Jiankun, 25). Therefore, hackers become more discreet to consume more team on each application to manually remove checks since this activity is laborious and tedious. This furthermore makes many hackers quit hacking and shift to an easier target.

The easiest approach for individuals to avoid hacking is through configuring the personal computers and automatically installing software updates. Most hackers gain entree personal defenses through bugs present in the software which permit them to install malware on individual devices when the view adds or attached emails (Gubin et al., 7). Automatic and regular operating systems updates, individuals practices preventive hygiene to protect the devices against hacking.

Preventions

There are various preventive measures that both big business and individuals can take to prevent hacking actions on their systems and data. For instance, a business may utilize a Virtual Private Network abbreviated as VPN (Gubin et al., 6). VPN makes sure that businesses traffic encoded and impossible to access by potential hackers. Biometric identification technologies can also be employed in business as a hacking preventive measure. They can be merged with various authentication, for instance, password to upsurge security of access to data and protect it against intruders and hackers.

Individuals should be observant of the phishing emails which trick them to click such emails which permit hackers to gain entry into their data or perform malware. Hackers create this phishing email to appear real and legit by resembling those of famous brand or companies. Therefore, individuals should give close attention to detect such emails which are not genuine. Individuals should also remove all software they do not use their personal computers or mobile phones. Hackers utilize every available technique to gain entree to individual systems. One of the technique is to exploit recognized holes in the majority of regularly employed software (Parker et al., 711). Therefore, where one does not require a program, the best action is uninstalling it since it acts as an appropriate hacking preventive measure.

Conclusion

Cryptography have existed for many centuries and have proved to be essential in protecting data from unauthorized access while being stored or transmitted to intended recipients. Furthermore, it experienced drastic development both during the ancient and modern time to increase protection of data. With this advancements in cryptography, hackers also have developed their hacking tactics. However, there have been identified stro...