Cryptography of the Internet - Part Base
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This article is probably going to be a bit long.  I do think
it is necessary to understand the evolution of cryptography.

People have always balanced between distrust and no-distrust.
I am using these words because I believe distrust to be the
neutral, in this binary form.

In ancient times, there was these awesome people that carry
messages between gathering/settlements of people.  These awesome
people were called "messengers".  Naturally, this was a great
advancement in civilizations: one could connect with people
outside their settlement, by sending messages through these
messengers...  What an awesome thing!

I imagine that haters started to try to infiltrate these networks
of messengers, in order to control and know what the target
of their hate was up to.  Indeed, these haters still exist
in our modern society.  Nowadays, and probably back then too,
these haters are people which mostly have a great leverage on
(hierarchical) human-controlling structures.

So, naturally, people got aware of this infiltration towards, and
control of, networks of messengers; and distrust in messengers
spread out.  I imagine that some recipients of messages would
kill the messenger, if they could be sure, that only that
messenger had carried that message.  For the sake of the message
to be private.  Therefore the today's knowledge of the saying
"I am just a messenger" or the "Don't kill the messenger".

Until, some brilliant mathematical mind, came up with a
solution towards the distrust issue on networks of messenger:
to equate letters with numbers, and use some mathematical
formula to disguise the words of messages.  This way, even if
the haters infiltrated the networks of messengers, the haters
would be left with an unreadable, totally gibberish, message.
Not with the original text of the message.

In order for this disguised message to work, the writer
and the recipient (of the message) must both agree on a
*private*/*secret* number (or a *private* phrase that will be
transformed into a number).  The writer would encode the message
using a mathematical formula and this *private* number.  And,
since (almost) all Math formulas have a symmetrical counterpart,
the recipient of the message would use the symmetrical opposite
of that formula and this same *private* number, to remove the
encoding.  And the recipient could then read the original text.

The Mathematical formula, for encoding, and its symmetrical
opposite formula, for decoding, can be known by anyone.
Privacy can rely only on keeping the *private* number a secret
between both.  So, for the correspondents privacy sake, they must
agree which number to use without any other person knowing this
number.  Preferably they shared this *private* number in-person.
Then, they could go out to their separate lives, and communicate
without haters knowing the content of their messages.

This type of encoding and decoding, today, is known as
Private-key Cryptography.  What a positive evolution! :-) .

Until a more modern and brilliant mathematical mind, came up with
another type of Cryptography, to address a further problem...
Which gave secrecy (and more) to the Internet...


tags: #cryptography #key #secret #privacy

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keyboardan

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