Before we will get into details of Cryptography fundamentals, let’s look at cryptography from a bird’s eye view.
The main terms which need to be introduced are:
- plaintext: the message itself we want to encrypt
- ciphertext: the encrypted message
- key: a sequence of numbers used to encrypt/decrypt
- encryption: the process of changing plaintext into ciphertext in a way that only the authorized parties can access it
- decryption: the process of retrieving plaintext from the ciphertext
It’s also worth noticing that there are two types of cryptography:
- symmetric where the key used in encryption and decryption is the same
- asymmetric where the key used in encryption is different from the one used in decryption.
Both types are needed at different stages and mechanisms of establishing secure communications. But this will be covered in the next posts.
Do share your knowledge about Cryptography fundamentals in the comment section !