Data Bank Decryption

Lore & Background

It discusses encryption in general cryptographic terms. Historically, one of the earliest forms of encryption is symbol replacement, found in the tomb of Khnumhotep II in 1900 BC Egypt. Around 800 AD, Arab mathematician al-Kindi developed frequency analysis. The polyalphabetic cipher was described by al-Qalqashandi (1355–1418) and Leon Battista Alberti (in 1465).

Around 1790, Thomas Jefferson theorized the Wheel Cipher. A similar device, the M-94, was developed in 1917 by US Army Major Joseph Mauborne. In World War II, the Axis powers used the Enigma Machine, which changed its letter combinations daily. The Allies used computing power to break the Enigma.

Today, encryption is used in Internet communication. DES used a 56-bit key and was cracked in 1999 by EFF's brute-force DES cracker in 22 hours and 15 minutes. Modern standards include AES (256-bit mode), TwoFish, ChaCha20-Poly1305, Serpent (configurable up to 512-bit). RC4 was cracked due to inherent biases.

In symmetric-key schemes, encryption and decryption keys are the same. In public-key cryptography, the encryption key is published; only the receiving party has the decryption key. Public-key encryption was first described in a secret document in 1973. The Diffie-Hellman key exchange was published subsequently. RSA was created in 1978. PGP was written in 1991 by Phil Zimmermann and purchased by Symantec in 2010.

Reader's Guide

It does not mention survival strategies, escape from a planet, or a turning point in a timeline.

Did You Know?

• Around 800 AD, Arab mathematician al-Kindi developed frequency analysis to crack ciphers systematically, including the Caesar cipher.
• The Enigma Machine used by Axis powers in WWII changed its letter combinations daily, requiring the Allies to check over 17,000 combinations within 24 hours.
• DES, a modern cipher suite with a 56-bit key offering 72,057,594,037,927,936 possibilities, was cracked in 1999 by EFF's brute-force DES cracker in 22 hours and 15 minutes.