Ever since World War II and the ensuing Cold War, cryptographic methods have bee

Question

Ever since World War II and the ensuing Cold War, cryptographic methods have been the source of much government angst. Protecting the information of one's own government and accessing the data of other governments has been a preoccupation of many nations. With the growth of civilian computer networks in the 1980s and the development of Internet-based e-commerce in the 1990s, concerns about data security spread from governments to the public sector. The tension between the government's goal of control of cryptographic methods and business' need for internationally trustworthy security resulted in skirmishes between the two. Let's discuss the modern history of cryptography in terms of commercial-governmental tensions. What can you find out about this? What are the considerations when determining how to standardize cryptographic methods? How are cryptographic methods regulated? What are the different laws that govern the use of cryptography? Are they reasonable? Whose interests are most important when determining the extent to which cryptography should be standardized, regulated, and mandated? Do a little research and see what you can come up with in one or more of these areas

Explanation / Answer

AES is a privacy transform for IPSec and Internet Key Exchange (IKE) and has been developed to replace the Data Encryption Standard (DES). AES is designed to be more secure than DES: AES offers a larger key size, while ensuring that the only known approach to decrypt a message is for an intruder to try every possible key. AES has a variable key length—the algorithm can specify a 128-bit key (the default), a 192-bit key, or a 256-bit key.I have read somewhere that the US goverment restricts export of Encryption technology. There are also other goverments around the world that restricts encryption technology within their own boundrairie to monitor the communication.

There are four main Goals of Cryptography. It is important to be familiar with these purposes and their associated limitations. They are:

According to an article written by Tony Damico, Cryptography began as early as 1900 B.C., when Egyptian messengers used hieroglyphs in a non-standard fashion, presumably to hide the meaning from those who did not know the meaning. Since then, cryptography did not change or advance, until the middle Ages. By that time, all of the western European governments were utilizing cryptography in one form or another. Keeping in touch with ambassadors was the major use of cryptography at the time,   Leon Battista Alberti, known as “The Father of Western Cryptology,” most notably for his development of polyalphabetic substitution, involving the use of two copper disks that fit together, consisting of alphabets inscribed on it. After every few words, the disks were rotated to change the encryption logic, thus making it impossible to decode. “In modern times, the public key method of cryptography has seen wide adoption. The use of a common public key and a private key held only by the sender is in use today as a form of asymmetric encryption; one of the uses of this method is for the sender to use the private key to encrypt the message and then anyone who receives the message uses the public key to decipher it.” Damico.

Different levels of need may require a higher level of security and more complicated cryptography that is more complicated to crack by outside parties. The military's need for secrecy in certain matters probably would take precedence over all other interests. However there is also a need for commercial interests to establish standards that are not so complicated that they hinder business.

In 1949 Claude Shannon developed principles for establishing encryption standards as follows: 1. Time spent on coding or decoding should depend on the amount of secrecy that correlates to the task or message. 2. The keys for encoding and deciphering algorithms (encryption and decryption) should not be overly complex 3. Process implementation should be as simple as possible 4. Errors in the ciphering process should not result in compounding of mistakes that make it easier for an unintended or unauthorized interceptor to decipher messages or for an intended receiver to get the wrong message. 5. The coded (enciphered) text should not be larger than the original text. Longer text would give someone else more information as to which to see patterns that could help them decipher message. It would also require more storage space for the sender of the code as well as more time to create it.

I believe that the interests of all the users of cryptography should be considered . I say that because of all of the different ways it can be done. I found this excerpt that gave a brief explanation of some of these different ways:

Cryptography, the art and science of secret writing, lies at the technical heart of Information Security. The basic cryptographic tools that are ubiquitously present are

References:

http://ditwww.epfl.ch/SIC/SA/SPIP/Publications/spip.php?article1150
Pfleeger, Charles, Pfleeger, Shari (2007) “Security In Computing” 4th Edition p. 60, 61 http://www.studentpulse.com/articles/41/a-brief-history-of-cryptography

According to an article written by Tony Damico, Cryptography began as early as 1900 B.C., when Egyptian messengers used hieroglyphs in a non-standard fashion, presumably to hide the meaning from those who did not know the meaning. Since then, cryptography did not change or advance, until the middle Ages. By that time, all of the western European governments were utilizing cryptography in one form or another. Keeping in touch with ambassadors was the major use of cryptography at the time,   Leon Battista Alberti, known as “The Father of Western Cryptology,” most notably for his development of polyalphabetic substitution, involving the use of two copper disks that fit together, consisting of alphabets inscribed on it. After every few words, the disks were rotated to change the encryption logic, thus making it impossible to decode. “In modern times, the public key method of cryptography has seen wide adoption. The use of a common public key and a private key held only by the sender is in use today as a form of asymmetric encryption; one of the uses of this method is for the sender to use the private key to encrypt the message and then anyone who receives the message uses the public key to decipher it.” Damico.

Different levels of need may require a higher level of security and more complicated cryptography that is more complicated to crack by outside parties. The military's need for secrecy in certain matters probably would take precedence over all other interests. However there is also a need for commercial interests to establish standards that are not so complicated that they hinder business.

In 1949 Claude Shannon developed principles for establishing encryption standards as follows: 1. Time spent on coding or decoding should depend on the amount of secrecy that correlates to the task or message. 2. The keys for encoding and deciphering algorithms (encryption and decryption) should not be overly complex 3. Process implementation should be as simple as possible 4. Errors in the ciphering process should not result in compounding of mistakes that make it easier for an unintended or unauthorized interceptor to decipher messages or for an intended receiver to get the wrong message. 5. The coded (enciphered) text should not be larger than the original text. Longer text would give someone else more information as to which to see patterns that could help them decipher message. It would also require more storage space for the sender of the code as well as more time to create it.

I believe that the interests of all the users of cryptography should be considered . I say that because of all of the different ways it can be done. I found this excerpt that gave a brief explanation of some of these different ways:

Cryptography, the art and science of secret writing, lies at the technical heart of Information Security. The basic cryptographic tools that are ubiquitously present are

• cryptographic hashes, to quickly ‘ngerprint’ documents;
• symmetric encryption, for fast encryption and decryption of large volumes of data;
• key agreement, to negotiate the key used for symmetric encryption;
• digital signatures,to sign(cryptographichashes of) documents.

References:

http://ditwww.epfl.ch/SIC/SA/SPIP/Publications/spip.php?article1150
Pfleeger, Charles, Pfleeger, Shari (2007) “Security In Computing” 4th Edition p. 60, 61 http://www.studentpulse.com/articles/41/a-brief-history-of-cryptography

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