Data Encryption: How Secure Are We? Essay, Research Paper

Brad Plank

10/4/01

Senior Research

Synopsis

Encryption and Cryptography

Have you ever wanted to send a message to someone while distorting it in some fashion so the only person who can UN-distort it is the person you send it to? This way, if a third party intercept this message, all they see is a bunch of gibberish. This process is known as encryption and decryption. I will show in my research the history of cryptology, the different types of encryption, public and private, and their respective subsets of encryption. My final goal is to create a complex encryption system through software and/or hardware. I will incorporate my knowledge of modular mathematics as well as programming, possibly C++, Assembly, or VHDL. The main notion of encryption is that at least two people share a private key.

I will discuss the types of public key encryption and private key encryption, RSA, DSA, and PGP, Pretty Good Protection, a non government affiliated encryption system that uses public key cryptography.

There are hashing algorithms used in deciphering messages. I will attempt to create one of my own using a possible combination of these mathematical algorithms and then incorporating my encryption algorithm into a computer chip or program using a programming language.

Bibliography

1) Elementary Number Theory 4th Edition by Kenneth H. Rosen.

2) http://www.encryption.com.

3) http://www.cypherspace.org.

4) http://www.pgpi.org.