Computer Cryptography
When I first read the term computer cryptography, I thought that it was a technical term for “hacking.” After looking up “cryptography” on an on-line dictionary, I was sure I wasn’t far from the truth. But after further examining the topic, I find I am only partly right. Computer cryptography is a very complex thing. According to David Banisar [1], “Cryptography provides a means of accomplishing two crucial functions-encryption and authentication.”
In order to understand cryptography, I think it is best to first look at encryption and authentication. Then I will examine how it affects the privacy of personal computer users and how the government is attempting to deal with the cryptography issue. I will also take a brief look at quantum computers and their effect on the computer society.
Encryption is a security process, designed to secure information being sent electronically. It’s kind of like sending a message military-style. Instead of saying, “The president has left the White House,” a military official might say something like, “The eagle has left the nest.” The difference between the example above and encryption is that encryption has more to do with mathematics, since computers communicate using numbers, not letters.
Authentication is just as it sounds.
Authenticity means, “Not false or imitation. [2]” I also found that authenticate means, “to prove or serve to prove the authenticity of. [3]” Basically, it’s making something legitimate. Well, authenticating a computer document is the same as signing the document.
The sender uses a unique “digital signature” to let the receiver know that the document is official and sent from the right person.
So, to sum it up, computer cryptography software is designed to send and receive important messages using a type of secret code to send the message and an electronic signature to let you know the receiver’s software allowing him to easily read the message is real. The message is then decoded by message.
When personal computer users purchase something online, they use a credit card number or bank account number to make their purchase. This number is sent through the website to the company you’re shopping with. If there are any “bugs” in the site’s programming, other users can get a hold of your account information and use it to do the same, to purchase things online, where no one is there to verify that that is you (Stephen Budianski, “Losing the Code War,” Atlantic Monthly, 2002).
This book is considered an American Classic due to its longevity in popular literature. It also provides the important historical background on the Catholic Church and its impact on the American Southwest. Willa emphasizes, through her writings, the hardships of the people involved in making this part of America what it is today. It points out the influence of the earliest Spanish missionaries of the 16th century through the latter part of the 19th century involving French missionaries and exposes the corruptness as well as the dedication of the missionaries of the church. The book’s main setting is in the 19th century, during the settlement of New Mexico and Colorado and recalls the journeys that a priest undertook and the hardships overcame in order to meet his and the churches goal of bringing the Catholic faith to Mexicans and native Indians. Through his travels and the spiritual work in the beautiful, yet rough environment he was radically transformed. He was especially influenced by the experiences of the westward movement of the agricultural frontier because of the impact of the native people.
What is encryption? Encryption is a technological technique that protects and secures the transfer of plain text information between two sources through the use of the internet. This is done by rearranging the text using a mathematical algorithm that renovates the message into an indecipherable form, which can only be unlocked and translated with a use of a key. The strength of the encryption key is measured by its length, which is determined by the number of bits and by the type of encryption program.
Before Columbus landed in the West Indies in 1492, The Spanish Inquisition made it known to anyone within Spain’s domain of influence that if a person was not of the Catholic religion, they were to be punished severely and sometimes even fatally. This influence would undoubtedly be brought over to the Americas a century later, as the colonization of the New World would begin by then. While it was very essential for the Spanish (as well as the Portuguese) to improve their economy by using the resources they found in Latin America, it seemed to a number of them as if that was the only reason for being there, or the main reason at the very least. During the Spanish Inquisition and from that point after, it was the Pope’s main goal, to convert everyone to Roman Catholicism; an opportune moment arrived as the Americas were found, along with the Natives who resided there who were waiting to be converted.
I found three different e-commerce companies that have recently encountered a consumer privacy data breach. Target one of the most well-known breaches affected almost 40 million people, Evernote Corp., an online note-taking service, and LivingSocial, a company that offers gift certificates for customers to use in different cities around the globe. In this paper, I will be discussing what happened and how each company handled the different situations that they encountered. Target is one of the biggest and leading companies in the retail market. “Target’s customer credit and debit card information of as many as 40 million customers was compromised, which was called one of the largest breaches ever of American consumer data.”
About 15 million United States residents have their identities and information used fraudulently each year. Along the use of their identities, they also had a combined financial loss totaling up to almost $50 billion. Major companies such as Apple, Verizon, Target, Sony, and many more have been victims of consumer information hacking. In each of the cases, millions of consumers’ personal information has been breached. In the article “Home Depot 's 56 Million Card Breach Bigger Than Target 's” on September 18, 2014, 56 million cards were breached due to cyber attackers. Before the Home Depot attack, Target had 40 million cards breached. Company’s information is constantly being breached and the consumers’ are the ones who end up having to pay the price. If a company cannot protect the information it takes, then it should not collect the information.
At the beginning of Spanish colonization instilling the Catholic religion to the natives was a key factor in settling in America; however in the time after a shift in the role of religion occurred. For instance, in 1834, Coahuila and Texas guaranteed freedom of religion
Asymmetric Encryption is used to protect the data while in movement. Asymmetric Encryption is also known as Public Key Encryption. It uses two related keys, a public key and a private key which is not shared with anyone. This pair of keys are developed by mathematical methods which can be solved in one direction. So anyone can encode a data using the public key but only the user with a private key can decode that specific data. The length of Asymmetric Key Encryption is normally 1024 or 2048 bits. However, in Asymmetric framework the keys with smaller than 2048bits are considered as not safe to use.
There are many terms which have been introduced by the field of encryption. Each of these terms are need to understand this discussion. Plaintext is the original document to be transmitted or stored on a computer system. Ciphertext is the encrypted document. ...
Encryption refers to the translation of data into secret serial characters. It is the most successful medium to achieve security of data. To access an encrypted file or data, a user must have the secret key or password to allow the entry to the data for decryption. Encrypted data is called cipher text whereas an unencrypted data is referred to as plain text.
Advertising surrounds the world every second of the day. This form of influence has had the power to influence how society views gender roles ever since men and women began to appear in advertisements. Through the exposure to many different gender portrayals in advertising, gender roles become developed by society. This stems from how men and women are depicted, which forms stereotypes regarding the individual roles of men and women. People often shift their definition of an ideal image towards what they see in advertisements. From this, they tend to make comparisons between themselves and the advertisement models. Advertisements tend to be brief, but impactful. The different portrayals of men and women in advertising show that advertisements
The first Catholic priests came to South America with the conquistadors and through social and political force superimposed 16th century Catholicism upon conquered peoples and in subsequent generations upon slaves arriving in the New World. Catholicism has, likewise, frequently absorbed, rather than confronted, popular folk religious beliefs. The resulting religion is often overtly Catholic but covertly pagan. Behind the Catholic facade, the foundations and building structure reflect varying folk religious traditions. (2)
The endocrine system is a collection of glands in the body that help to control bodily metabolic activity by producing endocrine secretions. Although there are many glands in the endocrine system the main glands include the pancreas, ovaries, testes, kidneys, thyroid gland, parathyroid gland, adrenal glands, pineal gland, gastrointestinal tract, hypothalamus and pituitary gland.
The internet allows people to communicate sensitive information, and if received in the wrong hands can cause many problems for that person. Cryptography is the study or science of techniques of secret writing and message hiding. Cryptography constitutes any method in which someone attempts to hide a message, or the meaning, in some medium. One specific element of cryptography is encryption, which hides the data or information by transforming it into undecipherable code. Encryption uses a specified key to perform the data transformation.
Harvey, Brian. A. Computer Hacking and Ethics. Ed. Paul Goodman, P.G., a.k.a. Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.
Privacy in Cyberspace Computers and the Internet have changed many things in the world today. People surf the web on a daily basis for information and entertainment. The Internet is making things like paying your bills from home a possibility. This was something that you had to leave the house to do, even if it was just dropping a check in the mail. Now you can pay your bills and buy your groceries, with everything being just a point and a click away.