The art of scrambling messages has actually been in use for thousands of years (see history of Cryptography). However, beginning with the development of the telegraph and enigma machine, cryptography has been growing outside of military and highly diplomatic circles, and into the public domain.
E-commerce, personal and corporate privacy have continued the pervasive need for secure communications. Additionally, cryptographic techniques are not limited to the purpose of hiding messages, for instance, archeologists can use cryptographic techniques to interpret ancient or lost languages.
It wasn't until the arrival of the first electronic and programmable computers during the early 1940's at places such as Bletchley Park, that began a journey into a new field called computer science. The computing power of the room-sized Colossus can now be put into a Pentium microprocessor no bigger than your thumb. Modern computers can create incredibly complicated codes. These can only be broken by other computers thousands of times more powerful than Colossus.
The era of computers and electronics has meant an unprecedented freedom for cipher designers to use elaborate designs which would be far too prone to error if handled by pencil and paper, or far too expensive to implement in the form of an electromechanical cipher machine.
At the foundation of computer science is the algorithm. An algorithm is an abstract recipe that performs a finite and deterministic sequence of steps on some input to produce some output for solving a problem. An algorithm is a general solution for answering a family of questions. A computer program is an instantiation of an algorithm written in some programming language.
Everyone who has used the internet to buy books, music, or computer supplies appreciates the necessity of encrypting financial information like credit card numbers. As more and more people use the net to apply for home loans, buy automobiles, or do their banking, financial security becomes even more important. But it's not just financial information which needs to encrypted, privacy is important when researching and transmitting medical information or when writing letters to a lover. Businesses too are using the internet to speed communication of ideas and documents among corporate divisions in different parts of the country and the world. Encryption is necessary to keep all of this information private, secure, and confidential.
Security is a major issue in the "information age." With the proliferation of personal computers, the software industry has expanded its efforts to protect computers from a multitude of viruses and spy-ware that can hijack or even destroy one's hard drive. The codes which protect the security of vast networks such as banking systems and the Internet were thought to be unbreakable. But computer hackers have already found their way into these systems.
Hackers
With the advent of computers and the Internet a new age in encryption has emerged, and with it a new codebreaker: the hacker
The concept of hacking entered the computer culture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the 1960s. Popular opinion at MIT posited that there are two kinds of students, tools and hackers. A "tool" is someone who attends class regularly, is always to be found in the library when no class is meeting, and gets straight As. A "hacker" is the opposite: someone who never goes to class, who in fact sleeps all day, and who spends the night pursuing recreational activities rather than studying.
There are standards for success as a hacker, just as grades form a standard for success as a tool. The true hacker can't just sit around all night; he must pursue some hobby with dedication and flair. It can be telephones, or railroads (model, real, or both), or science fiction fandom, or ham radio, or broadcast radio. It can be more than one of these. Or it can be computers. (In 1986, the word "hacker" is generally used among MIT students to refer not to computer hackers but to building hackers, people who explore roofs and tunnels where they're not supposed to be.)
A "computer hacker," then, is someone who lives and breathes computers, who knows all about computers, who can get a computer to do anything. Equally important, though, is the hacker's attitude. Computer programming must be a hobby, something done for fun, not out of a sense of duty or for the money. (It's okay to make money, but that can't be the reason for hacking.) There are specialties within computer hacking. An algorithm hacker knows all about the best algorithm for any problem. A system hacker knows about designing and maintaining operating systems. And a "password hacker" knows how to find out someone else's password.
Quantum cryptography
Quantum Cryptography is an emerging technology which is set to revolutionize cryptography and digital security. This process involves encoding bits of encryption data onto particles of light - photons. Using properties of quantum physics, the technique encrypts data with keys that reveal if they have been intercepted or tampered with.
Quantum cryptography scrambles data in a different way by using the strange properties of the quantum world to guarantee that keys have been swapped securely. Information about the key is encoded on to a single photon of light. Quantum physics guarantees that the properties of the photon will change if anyone intercepts it and tries to read the information off it. Once two parties have swapped a key that they know to be safe they can be sure that the messages they are sending each other are secure.
"Imagine if you received a letter, you opened that letter and read it - there is no way of telling if someone has read that letter en route...When you encode the information on single particles, the letter self destructs whenever someone else reads it." (Toshiba's Dr. Andrew Shields, who leads the development group)
Although the technology is already in use, there are still some limitations to iron out, even so within the next coming years, governments and armed forces are thought to be among the first users of this new technology.
Enigma Cipher Machine Homepage: Jamie Brownell
References
