Encryption
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Encryption is the cryptographic transformation of data (plaintext) into a form (ciphertext) that conceals its original meaning from anyone lacking the appropriate key.
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Decryption reverses the process of encryption.
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Modern encryption divides into symmetric-key schemes and asymmetric or public-key schemes.
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Symmetric-key encryption schemes use one shared key.
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Asymmetric or public-key encryption schemes use a public/private key pair.
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Symmetric-key schemes and asymmetric-key schemes are often combined in practice.
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Encryption provides confidentiality.
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Integrity and authenticity require additional mechanisms beyond encryption.
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Substitution ciphers were in use in antiquity.
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Julius Caesar shifted letters of the alphabet in his correspondence.
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The earliest known description of frequency analysis is attributed to the 9th-century Arab scholar al-Kindi.
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Kerckhoffs stated in 1883 that a cipher system should remain secure even if everything about it except the key is public.
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Shannon proved that the one-time pad achieves perfect secrecy, provided the key is random, at least as long as the message, and never reused.
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The Data Encryption Standard (DES) was published as a US federal standard in 1977.
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In 1998 the Electronic Frontier Foundation built a machine that recovered a DES key by brute force in about 56 hours.
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Diffie and Hellman publicly introduced public-key cryptography in 1976.
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Rivest, Shamir and Adleman published the RSA public-key cryptosystem in 1978.
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The security of the RSA public-key cryptosystem rests on the difficulty of factoring large integers.
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GCHQ disclosed in 1997 that its staff (Ellis, Cocks, Williamson) had developed equivalent public-key concepts in classified work in the early 1970s.
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The Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) is based on the Rijndael cipher by Daemen and Rijmen.
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The Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) uses a 128-bit block.
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Authenticated encryption modes such as Galois/Counter Mode (GCM) provide confidentiality and integrity together.
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TLS 1.3 is the current version of the main protocol for encrypting internet traffic.
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TLS 1.3 was standardized in 2018.
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TLS 1.3 permits only authenticated-encryption cipher suites.
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Shor showed in 1994 that a sufficiently large quantum computer could factor integers and compute discrete logarithms in polynomial time.
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Factoring integers and computing discrete logarithms in polynomial time by a quantum computer would break RSA and Diffie-Hellman.
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NIST published its first post-quantum cryptography standards in August 2024.
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NIST's first post-quantum cryptography standards include ML-KEM for key encapsulation.
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No publicly known quantum computer can break deployed RSA or elliptic-curve key sizes.
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End-to-end encryption prevents service providers from reading user content.
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In 2016 the US Department of Justice sought a court order compelling Apple to help unlock an iPhone used by a San Bernardino attacker.
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The 2016 DOJ case against Apple was dropped after the FBI gained access to the iPhone by other means.
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The UK Investigatory Powers Act 2016 allows the government to issue notices requiring operators to maintain technical capabilities, including removal of electronic protection.
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Law-enforcement officials argue that providers should retain the ability to produce plaintext under warrant.
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Many cryptographers argue that any exceptional-access mechanism introduces vulnerabilities exploitable by other parties.
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Whether client-side scanning is compatible with end-to-end encryption is disputed in ongoing legislative debates.
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Encryption is the cryptographic process of encoding data so that it remains hidden from or inaccessible to unauthorized users.
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Encryption transforms readable plaintext into an unreadable format called ciphertext using an algorithm and a cryptographic key.
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Data transformed by encryption can only be recovered, or decrypted, by authorized parties who possess the corresponding decryption key.
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Readable data is known as plaintext.
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Unreadable data produced by encryption is known as ciphertext.
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Encryption converts plaintext into ciphertext.
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A cryptographic key is a discrete string of characters or bits used within an encryption algorithm to alter data so that it appears random.
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Symmetric-key encryption algorithms use the same cryptographic key for both the encryption of plaintext and the decryption of ciphertext.
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The Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) was established by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in 2001.
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Asymmetric-key encryption is also known as public-key cryptography.
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Asymmetric-key encryption uses a mathematically linked key pair consisting of a public key for encryption and a private key for decryption.
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The RSA algorithm is an asymmetric encryption cryptosystem.
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In end-to-end encryption (E2EE), communication is encrypted on the sender's device and only decrypted on the recipient's device.
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End-to-end encryption mathematically prevents third parties, including service providers, from accessing the plaintext.
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Transport Layer Security (TLS) is a cryptographic protocol that provides end-to-end communications security over computer networks.
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Transport Layer Security (TLS) is widely used for securing HTTPS web traffic.
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Substitution ciphers are a historical form of encryption.
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The Caesar cipher is an example of a substitution cipher.
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The Caesar cipher replaces each letter in a text with a letter a fixed number of positions down the alphabet.
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During World War II, the German military used an electromechanical rotor cipher machine known as the Enigma to encrypt communications.
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Shor's algorithm theoretically demonstrates that a sufficiently large quantum computer could efficiently factor large prime numbers.
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RSA and Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) are widely used asymmetric encryption schemes.
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NIST initiated a process to evaluate and standardize Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) algorithms in response to the threat posed by quantum computing.
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Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) algorithms are designed to be secure against both quantum and classical computers.
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Law enforcement and intelligence agencies globally argue that ubiquitous strong encryption hinders criminal investigations and national security efforts.
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The phenomenon of strong encryption hindering investigations is often termed 'Going Dark'.
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Law enforcement and intelligence agencies frequently advocate for mandated exceptional access or built-in backdoors in encryption.
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Privacy advocates, cryptographers, and human rights organizations counter that engineered backdoors fundamentally compromise the mathematical security of encryption.
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Critics of backdoors argue that engineered backdoors make systems inherently vulnerable to malicious actors and authoritarian state surveillance.
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The theoretical capability of quantum computers to break current public-key encryption is mathematically established.
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The timeline for when a cryptographically relevant quantum computer (CRQC) will be successfully built remains highly contested.
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Estimates from physicists and computer scientists for building a CRQC range from less than a decade to several decades.
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External references: Wikidata Q141090