Cryptography In Daily Life

What is cryptography?

Ordinarily cryptography is the technique to transform readable data to unreadable data. We deal with it every day of our life. Many significant areas of science use cryptography, but everyone of us has been utilizing it for years, yet didn’t understand what he/she was doing. You can write and study infinitely when it comes to cryptography, therefor this really is a little peak in the areas where it is applied. Now let’s see where cryptography is employed!

I actually don’t get it, what does this really mean?

Think of the ordinary people. We all have secrets, we now have lots of them, and some of them are so precious that people would rather die then tell something about it. Is not it? Another really straightforward example arises from family lives. A family might be looked at just like a little community consisting of 2-10 members, differing from country to country and depending on what you call “family”. You go somewhere with your loved ones. You need to request your dad when you are going to your own cabana which stands in an incredibly beautiful area, and you don’t want others to find out you’re going there. You merely request your old man: “When do we go there?” And that’s it. You just used cryptography! Why? Only because others who heard what you’ve just said do not know what you’re talking about.

The role of cryptography in our lives

This technique is so significant, that we couldn’t do lots of things without it. Why so? Well I want to describe to you personally. I will now take some of the very important regions of cryptography use.

E-mails

We live in a modern world. We should deliver emails, either for company, to friends, businesses, famous people whose address we’ve. It does not matter. We send emails all the time. Individuals deliver around 210 billion e-mails daily !
When you deliver an email, it has to get trough the internet – a giant network comprising plenty of computers most of which are unprotected and attackable. Lots of individuals want to steal data from others, sometimes only for enjoyment, but risk comes when it’s about something else. Just believe a minute of how big the Internet is. The very first three countries in the greatest variety of internet users list are:

• 1.China (253.000.000 users)
• 2.USA (220.141.969 users)
• 3.Japan (94.000.000 users)

That is a lot! There are approximately 6,720 billion people on earth. And only the very first three states have 0,567 billion Internet users. That’s around 8,43%. Now picture what’s on the market.

How can emails get shielded while they’re being sent? All connections between routers and routers themselves need to be ensured. That’s done by using data encryption. Generally there would be two systems for this particular security.

The first one would be to use PGP (Pretty Good Privacy). That is both the name of a computer program along with the protocol itself. However, what exactly is pgp protocol in fact? It is a way to secure e-mails, a standard in cryptographically secure e-mails. Basically it’s used with MIME Security. Before encrypting with pgp, message body and headers needs to be in MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) canonical format. “multipart/encrypted” denotes encrypted pgp data and must comprise the following parameter:

protocol=”application/pgp-encrypted”

The multipart/encrypted consists of two parts. The initial part is a MIME body with “application/pgp-encrypted” content type and contains the control information. Also the message body must contain the following line:

Variation: 1

Complete information for decrypting is contained by the pgp packed format. The next part can be a MIME body, with a more straightforward construction. It includes the encrypted information itself and it is labeled with an “application/octet–stream” content type.

The next procedure is a catchy one. Sender possesses a safe website, recipient has a username and password, and recipient may see the message after logging into the web site.

However ISPs can encrypt communication between servers using TLS (Transport Layer Security) and SASL (Simple Authentication and Security Layer). E-mail servers utilize this sort of protection between each other for example, these servers need their communicating protected so no unintentional server might get a replica of any email going through these e-mail servers.

TLS can be used in many various setups. TLS can be used with POP3, IMAP, and ACAP. If HTTP is protected by TLS, it provides more security then simple HTTP. A lot of existing customer and server products support TLS, but many provide no support. Let us check on more details about TLS/SSL.

TLS and SSL

TLS (Transport Layer Security) and SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) are practically exactly the same, actually TLS is the successor of SSL; there are only slight differences between them. They are used for: instant messages, e-mails, browsing, internet faxing. Well, two of the above mentioned are used by everyone. E-mails and browsing the Internet: things you do practically regular. TLS plays an essential part on the world wide web, notably in communications seclusion and endpoint authentication. HTTP, FTP, SMTP, NNTP, XMPP are all protocols with TLS protection. TLS can add security to any protocol which uses a reliable connection (like TCP – Transmission Control Protocol). TLS is most commonly used with HTTP to make HTTPS. In addition , we have to mention that TLS is growing in SMTP lately. In case of VPN, TLS is used to tunnel a whole network stack. VPN is going to be discussed in its details afterwards. Let’s just consider HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) and FTP (File Transfer Protocol).

There are around 63 billion websites all around the globe, and around 1 trillion unique URLs!

Most of them have plenty of visitors daily. Visualize how important servers are, how important their security is. What would occur if an ordinary hacker could break into any server? Catastrophe! He’d then break another and another and another… Information could be stolen every single minute; Internet would not have any safe zone. You would be frightened to send e-mails, to post anything to a website/forum. It is hard to realize what would happen without security, the majority of which is completed by cryptography.

Lots of us also use FTP (File Transfer Protocol) to transfer information between two computers. It works just like you’d open Windows Explorer to look at files and folders. The only real difference is that on an FTP connection you can even download files, not simply view or browse them. There are plenty of FTP servers and clients accessible on the web. These applications can facilitate your work, you are able to organize your downloads if you make use of the client side, or you can organize what others can download in the event you are using the server side. Appears to be a simple way to transfer files from your own buddies, from your loved ones, to your family, is not it? FTP even lets you to use usernames and passwords for your own protection. Each of the above mentioned is clear and nice said, but even this manner FTP is exposed! How so? Involving its design, FTP is assembled in a way which supplies skill for users on the same network as the transfer has been processed to sniff data including: files, usernames, and passwords. There’s no built in security or data encryption. A well known remedy for this particular security problem would be to use either SFTP or FTPS. Be careful! It is confounding. SFTP and FTPS are two very otherwise working file transfer protocols, they’re different. SFPT is SSH (Secure Shell) File Transfer Protocol. SSH additionally uses public-key cryptography, which works like this: you have a text to encrypt, and you might have a public key along with a private key. Text gets encrypted using the public key, but just who knows the private key can decrypt it. With its design – the usage of public-key cryptography – SSH is essentially used to log into a machine and run commands, but also can transfer files (trough SFTP or SCP), and in addition supports tunneling and port forwarding. FTPS is commonly known as FTP/SSL. FTPS uses SSL/TLS below normal FTP to encrypt the control and/or data channels.

VPN

VPN (Virtual Private Network) is like a virtual computer network. Why so? Consider the Internet. How can it work? It consists of a lot of computers and servers linked to each other. And how do connections exist and work? They exist physically, they’re linked with wires. Basically the user comes with an ISP (Internet Service Provider) trough which it gains access to the Internet. Now, what is the difference between Internet network linking and Virtual Private Network linking? VPN uses virtual circuits or open connections to have the network together.

All fine, but VPN needs security to be efficient and used. Well, it’s a special security system. I will reflect on VPN security problems. Authentication is needed before VPN connection. If you are a known and trusted user, you might have use of resources inaccessible to other users. More interesting is that servers might also have to authenticate themselves to join the Virtual Private Network. Peculiar mechanism, users are familiar with being required to authenticate themselves on a website or server…but a server also wants authentication? Yes, it does! There are various authentication mechanisms used in VPNs. Many of these mechanisms are included in firewalls, access gateways as well as other devices. A VPN authentication mechanism uses: passwords, biometrics or cryptographic methods which may be combined with other authentication mechanisms.

Protected VPNs are designed to supply essential privacy for the users. The essence of this consists in cryptographic tunneling protocols. Secure Virtual Private Network ensures message integrity, confidentiality and sender authentication.

We could see how significant cryptography is in our own lives. These were somewhat technical information on cryptography use. But let’s consider a few other examples too, not too technical!

Abbreviations. You may be smart, intelligent, but you’re lost if someone uses an abbreviation and you don’t understand where it comes from and what it means. Presume you are on a vacation and hear someone saying: “I got that cool stuff from a great FTP server”. You don’t understand what this is about if you aren’t comfortable with File Transfer Protocol, and don’t know what it means and where it is used.

Think of the previous days, the 19th century along with the beginning of the 20th century. Individuals had no mobile phones, no internet, and no e mail sending chance. If they had a need to say something to someone who was far away from them, and they did not want to use phones…what could they do other then seeing that person or those persons? They used the Morse code. This is familiar to us, but a lot people only know what it means, not how to comprehend or produce Morse code itself. There were two common solutions to produce Morse code. One of it worked only for short distances generally. It absolutely was something like you pick up an object and hit another item to make sound; that sound was the Morse code.

Another option worked for big spaces too. Assume it was night time, and a boat was sailing on the sea or on the ocean, fighting a massive thunderstorm. Back then, folks had a lot of wooden ships, which couldn’t resist in front of a big storm’s power. So if there have been people on the ground, 1-2 kilometers from the boat location, they may have used a torch to direct the boat safely to the coast. The strong point of the torch Morse coding was that it worked even during daytime. Most usually it was utilized to ask for assistance, if someone was in trouble during day.

Lots of times there were folks who’d small boats, got themselves far away from the seashore, and didn’t understand how to get back to the shoreline. It was terrifying, and individuals couldn’t manage themselves to “think” where to go. So they waited until a ship came close sufficient to be on sight, and after that they used the flashlight, and were monitored if fortunate.

We use telephones and mobile phones to communicate. Phones transmit electrical signals over a complex telephone network. This technology allows nearly anyone to communicate with nearly anyone. The only real problem is given by the fact that telephones can simply be eavesdropped. Eavesdroppers just need three items to perform the operation: a pickup apparatus, a transmission link as well as a listening post. If someone has the previously discussed components, it can be an eavesdropper.

The pickup device is most generally a microphone or a video camera. These devices can record audio or and video pictures afterwards to be converted to electric signs. Also some listening devices can store information digitally and then send it to some listening post. The transmission link may be a wire or a radio transmission. A listening post enables monitoring, recording or retransmitting signs. It may be as close as the next room, or several blocks away. An eavesdropper simply has to place a bug in your telephone, also it is prepared. Do not get confused, it’s only a matter of seconds to install a bug. All these process is based on installing devices.

Landlines can also be tapped anywhere between your phone and the telephone company’s office. Anyway, the installer of the telephone tap desires physical access to the telephone cables. There are many methods to gain access. This second method is called bugging, which calls for no apparatus installing and needs no access to the victim’s telephone. You are able to guard yourself against eavesdropping with phone encrypting apparatus. Mobile phones are employed by almost every second man on earth. It has all the functionality of a simple phone, but it adds more services like:

SMS, MMS, E-Mail, Internet, Gaming and Bluetooth. Mobile phones automatically connect to GSM towers or satellites, regarding to which of them is better in time as well as accessible. Cell phone signals could be picked up just as a backyard satellite dish pulls television signals in. To guard yourself against eavesdropping, it is possible to acquire cell phone encrypting apparatus. Luckily there are encrypting devices for both telephones and mobile phones.

Many children like to devise new things and investigate everything around them! Likely you know about a few kids encrypting their messages or diaries like picking a custom ABC. Which is simple to do. You get an extreme character for each letter of the ABC, and just you and also the ones who need to be able to read your messages know which symbol corresponds to which character.

Conclusion

We have seen lots of distinct places of where cryptography is employed in our days or in the past. As a common man, it is possible to detect cryptography everywhere around yourself! It is so amazing how much science got, and it keeps going and going, getting lots of new knowledge each day. Emails and Internet are used by more and more folks every single day. We just can not imagine our lives without it. And all of those work and get secured based on cryptography.