The National Security Agency and Cryptography Term Paper

The subject field Security Agency and Cryptography - Term Paper ExampleIn the past, cryptography was primarily apply for military and government intelligence, which is still very important to date. However, advancement in electronic communication clays particularly the internet has fueled the exercise of cryptography in sending private gists and information such as medical records, banking data and credit card numbers among others via electronic channels. Cryptography ensures rapid, secure and confidential electronic communication between two or more hoi polloi (Nsa.gov, 2). Garfinkel points out that mathematical cryptography involves the use of mathematical attend toes for sending secret information. It uses the method of encryption, which only the recipient can comprehend. Through this method, a plaintext message is converted into ciphertext, which is sent to the other party. The receiver of the message converts the ciphertext back to plaintext using decryption. The channel s through which the messages atomic number 18 sent may be open or accessible to outside parties who intercept messages but these people cannot understand or interfere with the information. A Cryptographic system is a process, method or system that provides security in terms of integrity, non-reputation, authentication, access control and confidentiality. The system provides encryption and decryption, which may be software, computer tryingware or even a manually performed process. A cryptanalytic system ensures confidentiality of information by preventing its manifestation to unauthorized persons either in a local network or across a network. Therefore, for a cryptographic system to be effective in preventing unauthorized decryption of messages, it should be strong, making it hard to crack and to break the system. However, a system is considered weak if it is easily decrypted, has defects in its designs or if it allows weak keys (Dulaney 326). The cryptographic system should als o provide an assurance that the recipient receives the original message from the sender. It should not allow whatever kind of modification on the message during transmission because if this happens, the message is altered and it becomes unintelligible and inaccurate, which may imbibe serious consequences on the recipient. For instance, if such alterations happened in medical records that involved drug prescriptions, the patient under medication may be in danger. Therefore, a cryptographic system should ensure integrity in its process by having mechanisms that will indicate that the message was altered or corrupted, hence allowing proper precautions (Dulaney 327). There are four fundamental principles behind cryptography. The first principle implies the use of a plaintext, which is the message that the sender wishes to encrypt. subsequently the encryption, the message becomes a ciphertext, which is the second principle. The third principle involves a mathematical function known a s encryption algorithm that encrypts the message and the fourth principle implies the type of key or keys used in cryptography. The key(s) can be a phrase, a number or a word that is used by the mathematical function for encryption. The main goal of cryptography is to ensure that the original plaintext cannot be reproduced from the ciphertext without using the equal key(s) (Garfinkel, 33). Cryptography requires both the sender and the receiver to have the knowledge of the procedures involved in encryption and de