Cryptography

Cryptography in a nutshell.

Cryptography is the art of hiding information or making it undecipherable. Cryptography is closely related to Mathematics and knowledge of if is needed in order to fully understand the concept. If has many uses and knowing how to use it is a valuable tool for protecting your information from prying eyes.

Uses

Cryptography has a wide variety of uses ranging from hiding your information to becoming a l33t h4x0r. A hard drive can be encrypted to make your data unreadable to anyone except yourself and it can only be decrypted by a key. Keep in mind that simply encrypting your drive will NOT hide it from the FBI, and if you want to do that, you will need to know your shit. In the event that your computer is stolen, the criminal would not be able to view your information.

Cryptography is commonly used by:

• The FBI
• Pedophiles
• l33t h4x0rz
• Websites
• Programmers

Normal people may use cryptography to protect their information as it being stolen may cost them money or their privacy. Website and Programmers use cryptography to make your connections to the site private as well as your password on the server.

Hashes

I will be using a SHA256 hash to give you an example of how a website protects your password.

1. You enter your password for the first time

Password:MyPass12345

It is then encrypted with the hash

MyPass12345 -> SHA256 = 586aaf7596c3243791db15014f3da02fa8d7e4f67c2daa51d003cff572d02607

Once this is done, it cannot be reversed

2. The server stores your password as the hash

A hash guarantees that if the database is breached, your password will still be safe and you will not have to worry.

When you re-enter your password, it will re-hash it and compare it to your original password.

FakePass1 -> SHA256 = 582796d178a656691b74031f7a9564bacbaf716a2a2009f69341c289079d1287

Comparing the hash = 586aaf7596c3243791db15014f3da02fa8d7e4f67c2daa51d003cff572d02607

NOT THE SAME

MyPass12345 -> SHA256 = 586aaf7596c3243791db15014f3da02fa8d7e4f67c2daa51d003cff572d02607

Comparing the hash = 586aaf7596c3243791db15014f3da02fa8d7e4f67c2daa51d003cff572d02607

THEY ARE THE SAME

Steganography

Steganography is hiding information within an image by changing only a few pixels to make the image look the same.

Ciphers

Ciphers are set and change letters to another preset. These are extremely easy to crack and aren't recommended.

ROT

ROT is basically moving every letter up once.

ABCDEFG -> ROT1 -> BCDEFGH

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