Cryptology

Digital Keys - GovCyberHub

Cryptology is the study of making ciphers and breaking codes and cryptography refers to the action of creating these ciphers. Cryptology is nothing new. It has been around for thousands of years. It can be found in the oldest texts and stories, relating to some of the first written words. Egyptian hieroglyphics were one of the earliest ciphers. When looking at the images of humans, animals, or shapes, someone not familiar with the culture might interpret the symbols as they are, instead of looking at the symbolism the images hold. Julius Caesar used the famous Caesar Cipher, which shifted the alphabet a certain number of letters. Transmitting messages that only certain people could understand has always been important. Cryptography was created because of the need for secret messages.

Early ciphers were considered unbreakable for some time. When enemies got hold of encoded messages, they figured out that they were encrypted. If the number of shifted characters is known for a Caesar cipher, it can be easily broken. Even if the shifted amount is unknown, there are only 26 letters in the alphabet and the code can be cracked within an hour by hand. As humanity evolved, ciphers only grew in complexity.

While Europe suffered in the Dark Ages, the Arabs were living in a time of scientific and linguistic achievement. They found that, in the Arabic alphabet, some letters were more frequently observed than others. This is the same with the English language. The letter “f” appears more frequently than the letter “x”, but less than the letter “a”. Ciphers which match the frequencies of letters were developed to increase the complexity of codes. At this time, cryptography was only practiced in Europe in monasteries to decode messages within the Bible. Cryptology spread through European politics, during the Renaissance. Independent city-states and countries needed means of communicating secretly.

As the decades wore on, the need for ciphers wasn’t just within politics anymore. During the industrial era, with the invention of the telegraph, people began to send their messages in scrambled letters instead of plaintext (unencoded text). This was so the telegraph operators wouldn’t read them. Ciphers and codes were crucial during the World Wars, to safely transmit highly classified information without it falling into enemy hands. One example would be the Enigma Machine, a German machine which generated codes that were rendered unbreakable by the Allies for some time. Later, the mathematician Alan Turing cracked the codes rendered by the Enigma Machine, using the Bombe Machine.

Today, cryptology is even more important. Everything is digital and protected using cryptology. Passwords would be useless if they weren’t stored hashed in databases. Hackers need to bypass firewalls and crack codes to steal data or money. Even though we don’t have to send physical letters, our emails and SMS messages are still sent encrypted. Cryptology keeps our data safe, so it should not be taken for granted.

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~ Edited by Christian Mueth

References:

1. https://trace.tennessee.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1398&context=utk_chanhonoproj
2. https://www.nsa.gov/about/faqs/rich-heritage-cryptology-faqs/#crypt3

This article was originally published at the Teach-Technology Organization, Inc. online technology blog. I volunteer as a tech blog writer at this organization, which is dedicated to bridging the gap between seniors and technology. You can read this article (and many more) at the Teach Technology site.