Basic Of Cryptography for Beginners — Bondesk Blog

In this post, we will primarily look into the Basics Of Cryptography. First, we will look into basic terminologies used in the world of cryptography.

Plaintext:

This is the original message or original data that needs to be encrypted. In simple terms, An original message that needs to be encrypted is known as plaintext.

Ciphertext:

This is the encrypted message or output message which is produced as output. It mainly depends on the plaintext and the secret key. For a given plaintext, different secret keys will provide two different ciphertexts. The ciphertext is unintelligible and humans can’t understand the ciphertext.

Secret Key:

There are two different inputs to encryption algorithm one is plaintext and another one is the secret key. The secret key is a value that is independent of plaintext and the algorithm used.

Encryption Algorithm:

It is an algorithm that transforms and substitutes the plaintext into Ciphertext. There are different algorithms available for the same plaintext and the secret key different algorithm will provide different ciphertext.

Decryption Algorithm:

It is again an algorithm which is reverse of the encryption algorithm. It takes secret key and Ciphertext as input and will provide Plain text as output. The secret key should be the same as what we have used for encryption.

Encryption:

The process of converting from plaintext to ciphertext is called encryption or enciphering.

Decryption:

The process of converting from ciphertext to plaintext is called decryption or deciphering.

Cryptanalysis:

Cryptanalysis is a technique used to decipher a ciphertext without the knowledge of encryption details. It is also known as “Breaking the code”.

Cryptography:

The area of study of the encryption algorithm and its schemes is called cryptography.

Cryptology:

Cryptography and cryptanalysis have together known as cryptology.

These are the basic terminologies we will come across when we start learning cryptography. In the next post, we will learn more about cryptography in detail.

Originally published at https://blog.bondesk.in on December 1, 2019.