Untitled Essay, Research Paper

The Necessity Of Computer Security

When the first electronic computers emerged from university and military laboratories in

the late 1940s and early 1950s, visionaries proclaimed them the harbingers of a second

industrial

revolution that would transform business, government and industry. But few laymen, even if

they

were aware of the machines, could see the connection. Experts too, were sceptical. Not

only

were computers huge, expensive, one-of-a-kind devices designed for performing abstruse

scientific and military calculations, such as cracking codes and calculations missile

trajectories,

they were also extremely difficult to handle.Now, it is clear that computers are not only here to stay, but they have a profound effect

on society as well. As John McCarthy, Professor of Computer Science at Stanford

University,

speculated in 1966: "The computer gives signs of becoming the contemporary

counterpart of the

steam engine that brought on the industrial revolution – one that is still gathering

momentum and

whose true nature had yet to be seen."Today’s applications of computers are vast. They are used to run ordinary household

appliances such as televisions and microwaves, to being tools in the workplaces through

word

processing, spreadsheets, and graphics software, to running monumental tasks such as being

the

heart and soul of the nations tax processing department, and managing the project

timetables of

the Space Shuttle. It is obvious that the computer is now and always will be inexorably

linked to

our lives, and we have no choice but to accept this technology and learn how to harness

its total

potential.With any progressing technology, an unauthorized application can almost be found for it.

A computer could and has been used for theft and fraud – for example, as a database and

manager

of illegal activities such as drug trafficking and pornography. However, we must not just

consider

the harmful applications of the computer, but also take into account the good that they

have

caused.When society embraced the computer technology, we have to treat this as an extension of

what we already have at hand. This means that some problems that we had before the

computer

era may also arise now, in the form where computers are an accessory to a crime.One of the problems that society has faced ever since the dawn of civilization is privacy.

The issue of privacy on the Internet has risen many arguments for and against having it.

The issue

of privacy has gotten to the point where the government of the United States has placed a

bill

promoting a single chip to encrypt all private material on the Internet.Why is privacy so important? Hiding confidential material from intruders does not

necessarily mean that what we keep secret it illegal. Since ancient times, people have

trusted

couriers to carry their messages. We seal out messages in a envelope when sending mail

through

the postal service. Using computer and encrypting programs to transfer electronic messages

securely is not different from sending a letter the old-fashioned way. This paper will

examine the

modern methods of encrypting messages and analyse why Phil Zimmerman created an extremely

powerful civilian encipherment program, called the PGP, for "Pretty Good

Privacy." In

particular, by focusing on cryptography, which was originally intended for military use,

this paper

will examine just how easy it is to conclude why giving civilians a military-grade

encrypting

program such as the PGP may be dangerous to national security. Therefore, with any type of

new

technology, this paper will argue that the application of cryptography for civilian

purposes is not

just a right, but is also a necessity.Increasingly in today’s era of computer technology, not only banks but also businesses and

government agencies are turning to encryption. Computer security experts consider it best

and

most practical way to protect computer data from unauthorized disclosure when transmitted

and

even when stored on a disk, tape, of the magnetic strip of a credit card.Two encryption systems have led the way in the modern era. One is the single-key

system, in which data is both encrypted and decrypted with the same key, a sequence of

eight

numbers, each between 0 and 127. The other is a 2-key system; in this approach to

cryptography,

a pair of mathematically complementary keys, each containing as many as 200 digits, are

used for

encryptions and decryption. In contrast with ciphers of earlier generations, where

security

depended in part on concealing the algorithm, confidentiality of a computer encrypted

message

hinges solely on the secrecy of the keys. Each system is thought to encrypt a message so

inscrutably that the step-by-step mathematical algorithms can be made public without

compromising security.The single key system, named the Data Encryption Standard – DES for short – was

designed in 1977 as the official method for protecting unclassified computer data in

agencies of

the American Federal government. Its evolution began in 1973 when the US National Bureau

of

Standards, responding to public concern about the confidentiality of computerized

information

outside military and diplomatic channels, invited the submission of data-encryption

techniques as

the first step towards an encryption scheme intended for public use.The method selected by the bureau as the DES was developed by IBM researchers.

During encryption, the DES algorithm divides a message into blocks of eight characters,

then

enciphers them one after another. Under control of the key, the letters and numbers of

each block

are scrambled no fewer than 16 times, resulting in eight characters of ciphertext.As good as the DES is, obsolescence will almost certainly overtake it. The life span of

encryption systems tends to be short; the older and more widely used a cipher is, the

higher the

potential payoff if it is cracked, and the greater the likelihood that someone has

succeeded.An entirely different approach to encryption, called the 2-key or public-key system,

simplifies the problem of key distribution and management. The approach to cryptography

eliminates the need for subscribers to share keys that must be kept confidential. In a

public-key

system, each subscriber has a pair of keys. One of them is the so-called public key, which

is freely

available to anyone who wishes to communicate with its owner. The other is a secret key,

known

only to its owner. Though either key can be used to encipher or to decipher data encrypted

with

its mate, in most instances, the public key is employed for encoding, and the private key

for

decoding. Thus, anyone can send a secret message to anyone else by using the addressee’s

public

key to encrypt its contents. But only the recipient of the message can make sense of it,

since only

that person has the private key.A public key cryptosystem is called the PGP, for Pretty Good Privacy. Designed by Phil

Zimmerman, this program is freely distributed for the purpose of giving the public the

knowledge

that whatever communications they pass, they can be sure that it is practically

unbreakable.PGP generates a public and private key for the user using the RSA technique. The data is

then encrypted and decrypted with the IDEA algorithm – which is similar to the DES, but

the

work factor to decode the encrypted message by brute force is much higher than what the

DES

could provide. The reason why the RSA is used only when generating the keys is that the

RSA

takes a very long time to encrypt an entire document, where using the RSA on the keys

takes a

mere fraction of the time.At this time, Zimmerman is bing charged by the US government for his effort in

developing the PGP. The government considers encryption as a weapon, and they have

established regulations controlling or prohibiting the export of munitions. Since the PGP

is a

powerful encryption program, it is considered and can be used as a powerful weapon and may

be

a threat to national security.On the Internet, it is clear that many people all over the world are against the US

government’s effort on limiting the PGP’s encryption capabilities, and their reason is

that the ban

infringes on the people’s right to privacy.The PGP must not be treated only as a weapon, for it contains analogies that are not used

in wartime. One of them is authentication. The two-key cryptosystem is designed with

authentication in mind: Using someone’s public key to encrypt enables only the owner of

the

private key to decrypt the same message. In the real world, we use our own signature to

prove

out identity in signing cheques or contracts. There exists retina scanners that check the

blood

vessels in out eyes, as well as fingerprint analysis devices. These use our physical

characteristics

to prove our identity. A digital signature generated by a public key cryptosystem is much

harder

to counterfeit because of the mathematics of factoring – which is an advantage over

conventional

methods of tests for out identity.Another analogy the PGP has with the real world is the need for security. Banks and

corporations employ a trusted courier – in the form of an armoured truck or a guard – to

transfer

sensitive documents or valuables. However, this is expensive for civilian purposes, and

the PGP

provides the same or better security when securing civilian information.While many argue that limiting the PGP’s abilities are against the people’s right to

privacy,

the PGP must also be seen as a necessity as we enter the Information Age. There is

currently

little or no practical and inexpensive way to secure digital information for civilians,

and the PGP is

an answer to this problem.Computer privacy must not be treated differently than any other method to make private

any documents. Rather, we must consider the computer as a tool and use it as an extension

of

society’s evolution. Clearly the techniques we employ for computer privacy such as

encryption,

secure transfers and authentication closely mirrors past efforts at privacy and

non-criminal efforts.The government is putting more pressure against the distribution of PGP outside of the

United States. One of their main reasons was that since it is freely distributed and thus

can be

modified in such a way that even the vast computational resources of the US government

cannot

break the PGP’s secured message. The government could now reason that the PGP can provide

criminal organizations a means of secure communications and storage of their activities,

and thus

make the law enforcement’s job much harder in tracking criminals down and proving them

guilty.Also, we must never forget one of out basic human rights – one that many laid their lives

for, is freedom. We have the freedom to do anything we wish that is within the law. The

government is now attempting to pass a bill promoting a single algorithm to encrypt and

decrypt

all data that belongs to its citizens. A multitude of people around the world are opposed

to this

concept, arguing that it is against their freedom and their privacy.

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