History of Encryption
In its earliest form, people have been attempting to conceal certain
information that they wanted to keep to their own possession by
substituting parts of the information with symbols, numbers and
pictures.
Ancient Babylonian merchants used intaglio, a piece of flat
stone carved into a collage of images and some writing to identify
themselves in trading transactions. Using this mechanism, they are
producing what today we know as 'digital signature.' The public
knew that a particular 'signature' belonged to this trader, but
only he had the intaglio to produce that signature.
Of course, technology today has evolved at such rapid pace that
the need to protect information grows with the lessening reliability
of older encryption techniques. Basic modern encryption is not much
different from the ancient civilizations' substitution using symbols.
Translation table, lends itself very well in making a piece of data
generally unreadable. However computers today are much too advanced
that translation table is easily broken and thus no longer viable.
Instead encryption today has grown into such specialized field that
involve mathematical, non-linear cryptosystem that even a relatively
powerful computers take months or even years to break the ciphertext.
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