Slashdot Mirror
Modern History of Cryptography Techniques
Heather writes "The encryption scheme you rely on today might be full of holes just a few years down the road. Learn how far we've come in the last few decades, and why your apps need to be ready for change. This article builds on a previous article about Enigma, Germany's WWII-era encryption system."
The encryption scheme you rely on today might be full of holes just a few years down the road.
If is will be full of holes just a few years down the road, wouldn't it then be correct to say it's full of holes now?!
Cryptography is pretty heavily math-centric. To truly love cryptography over and above the obvious social factors and coolness level of being able to hide stuff, you really need to be somewhat of an academic math geek. Academia speaks a completely different language than real people. It's a hazard of living in dark hallways and not getting out much to meet the human race.
The article has no discussion of truly modern encryption schemes (their description stops at RSA/PGP and they don't even go into any details); it has no discussion of why modern schemes are considered more secure than DES, no discussion of what might make them less secure (i.e., no mention of factoring/discrete logs as the root 'hard problems' behind current crypto) and no discussion of what's on the horizon in terms of things like quantum cryptography.
On the other hand, it does go into cheerful detail on why IBM's Exciting New Coprocessor (r) is the right solution for your enterprise encryption needs!
I know IBM are the 'Good Guys' and all, but that doesn't make advertising for them (especially in the form of a front-page slashdot article) any more palatable than advertising for anyone else...