openssl

=OpenSSL and RSA Encryption Project= Main Menu

Cryptography
Cryptography is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of third parties (adversaries). It is about constructing and analyzing protocols that overcome the influence of the adversaries. These protocols are related to various aspects in information security such as data confidentiality, data integrity, and authentication. Modern cryptography intercepts the disciplines of mathematics, computer science, and electrical engineering. Applications of cryptography include ATM cards, computer passwords, and electronic commerce.

The history of cryptography began thousands of years ago. Until recent decades, it has been methods of encryption that use pen and paper, or simple mechanical aids. In the early 20th century, the invention of complex mechanical and electromechanical machines, such as the Enigma rotor machine, provided more sophisticated and efficient means of encryption. The subsequent introduction of electronics and computing has allowed elaborate schemes of greater complexity.


 * **Classical cryptography -** earliest known use of cryptography is found in non-standard hieroglyphs carved into monuments from the Old Kingdom of Egypt circa 1900 BC.
 * **Medieval cryptography** - religiously motivated textual analysis of the Qur'an which led to the invention of the frequency analysis technique for breaking monoalphabetic substitution ciphers, possibly by Al-Kindi, an Arab mathematician, sometime around AD 800.
 * **Cryptography from 1800 to WWII** - mathematical methods proliferated in the period prior to World War II (William F. Friedman, Marian Rejewski) in 1932.
 * **World War II cryptography** - mechanical and electromechanical cipher machines were in wide use, great advances were made in both cipher design and cryptanalysis.
 * **Modern cryptography** - the modern era of cryptography begins with Claude Shannon, the father of mathematical cryptography, with the work he did during WWII on communications security.
 * **Encryption standard** - mid 1970's publication of the Data Encryption Standard (DES), replaced in 2001 by the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES).
 * **Public key** - the 1976 publication of the paper New Directions in Cryptography by Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman they introduce a new method of key exchange. Encryption algorithms had been symmetric key algorithms where the sender and recipient use the same key and must keep it secret. In contrast, asymmetric key encryption uses a pair of mathematically related keys.

OpenSSL
The OpenSSL project is a collaborative effort to develop robust, commercial-grade, full-featured, and Open Source toolkit implementing the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL v2/v3) and Transport Layer Security (TLS v1) protocols as well as a full-strength general purpose cryptography library.

@http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptography
 * Resources**