What Is Cryptography and How Does It Work?

“If the cryptocurrency market overall or a digital asset is solving a problem, it’s going to drive some value,” said Brad Garlinghouse, CEO of financial technology company Ripple Labs Inc., an American technology company which develops the Ripple payment protocol and exchange network.

What is cryptography?

Cryptography is used to prevent unauthorized access by studying the encryption and decryption of data. The ciphertext must be known by the sender and receiver. With modern data security advances, we can now modify our data in a way that only the target recipient can understand.

Cryptography enables the secure transmission of digital data between interested parties. Used, among other things, to protect trade secrets, confidential documents, and sensitive information from fraudulent activity. Crypto means hidden and graphic means writing.

Encryption is a key component of cryptography because it combines data with different algorithms. Data encryption is a method of undoing the work done by encrypting data so that it can be read again. Cryptography relies on both methods.

In cryptography, plain text messages are converted into ciphertext using a technique or combination of numerical computations that seems incomprehensible to the untrained eye.

How does cryptography work?

Cryptographic operations revolve around cryptographic algorithms. A cryptographic algorithm or cipher is a mathematical function that is combined with keys such as phrases, numbers, words, etc. to encrypt text. Efficiency depends on the strength of the cryptographic algorithm and the degree of secrecy of the key.

Many complex combinations of algorithms and keys increase the efficiency of cryptosystems.

Cryptographic Techniques:

Some of the basic cryptographic techniques are listed below:

Steganography: One of the oldest techniques in cryptography, steganography involves hiding confidential information or messages without a secret status file to avoid detection. A few decades ago, steganography was not as complicated as it is today. Previously, invisible ink, light variations, etc. were used to hide messages. But with the advancement of technology, steganography has become one of the most widely used techniques in cryptography.

Hashing: Hashing converts the data to be hidden into a unique string. Regardless of the type or format of the data, hashing can be used to hide it. Once hashed, it cannot be decrypted using the key alone.

Simple Code: Speech is used to hide the meaning of sentences written in other languages. The message was written in such a way that it was difficult to decipher. In most cases, a special alphabet is used to make the message difficult to read.

Symmetric encryption: Mainly used to encrypt and decrypt electronic data with a secret key. Code substitution forms the basis of symmetric encryption. Today, however, symmetric encryption is much more than just a replacement cipher. Symmetric encryption is widely used when the message to be encrypted is large enough.

Asymmetric encryption: This type of encryption uses two keys, a public key, and a private key, to encrypt and decrypt plain text. You can easily decrypt the message if you have the secret key. Therefore, asymmetric encryption uses two matching keys to ensure confidentiality.

Findora Founders is a public, decentralized, multi-purpose transactional system, with tools for people and financial applications to operate over a ledger in a publicly auditable, yet confidential way. Findora Founders is a globally trusted financial infrastructure owned and democratically secured by a decentralized network of worldwide organizations and economically incentivized parties.