Let's think of a scenario where we have, a Sender – a Carrier - a Reciever.
Sender sends a message, “password: IceCream” in plain text , carrier carries that to Reciever. What if carrier reads the message in middle, he would steal your info right?
That’s where we can use cryptography. Cryptograpy is study and practice of secure communication where untrusted third party involves. Here the untrusted third party is Carrier.
You and your friend know a rule called atbash. More about that later. Now if you encrypt it with that rule and turn it into cipher text like this : “kzhhdliw:rxvxivzn” and send that message to receiver through the middleman.
The middleman can read it but you don’t need to worry about it cause he wouldn’t understand it right. Now your friend can decrypt it according to the rule and turn it into actual message “password: IceCream”. This is over simplified but that’s how cryptography works.
About the Atbash Algorithm :
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
ZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA
Look at those two rows. Think of 2nd row as value of 1st row. So A = Z, B = Y………….X=C,…….,Z = A.
Encipher or Encryption : Using that rule if you replace each character of “password:IceCream” you will get “kzhhdliw:rxvxivzn”.
Decipher or Decryption : Doing Vice versa on “kzhhdliw:rxvxivzn” like replacing Z = A, Y=B,…….., C = X, ……, A = Z like taking 1st row as value of 2nd row we get the original message “password:IceCream”.
Keys : Think of those rules as keys. Key to encrypt and key to decrypt a message.
Sender sends a message, “password: IceCream” in plain text , carrier carries that to Reciever. What if carrier reads the message in middle, he would steal your info right?
That’s where we can use cryptography. Cryptograpy is study and practice of secure communication where untrusted third party involves. Here the untrusted third party is Carrier.
You and your friend know a rule called atbash. More about that later. Now if you encrypt it with that rule and turn it into cipher text like this : “kzhhdliw:rxvxivzn” and send that message to receiver through the middleman.
The middleman can read it but you don’t need to worry about it cause he wouldn’t understand it right. Now your friend can decrypt it according to the rule and turn it into actual message “password: IceCream”. This is over simplified but that’s how cryptography works.
About the Atbash Algorithm :
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
ZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA
Look at those two rows. Think of 2nd row as value of 1st row. So A = Z, B = Y………….X=C,…….,Z = A.
Encipher or Encryption : Using that rule if you replace each character of “password:IceCream” you will get “kzhhdliw:rxvxivzn”.
Decipher or Decryption : Doing Vice versa on “kzhhdliw:rxvxivzn” like replacing Z = A, Y=B,…….., C = X, ……, A = Z like taking 1st row as value of 2nd row we get the original message “password:IceCream”.
Keys : Think of those rules as keys. Key to encrypt and key to decrypt a message.