A Brief History of Cryptology and Cryptographic Algorithms

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xii

   PDF

2. Introduction: A Revolutionary Cipher

   • John F. Dooley

   Pages 1-9

3. Cryptology Before 1500: A Bit of Magic

   • John F. Dooley

   Pages 11-17

4. The Black Chambers: 1500–1776

   • John F. Dooley

   Pages 19-29

5. Crypto Goes to War: 1861–1865

   • John F. Dooley

   Pages 31-42

6. Crypto and the War to End All Wars: 1914–1918

   • John F. Dooley

   Pages 43-51

7. The Interwar Period 1919–1939

   • John F. Dooley

   Pages 53-61

8. The Coming of the Machines: 1918–1945

   • John F. Dooley

   Pages 63-74

9. The Machines Take Over: Computer Cryptography

   • John F. Dooley

   Pages 75-86

10. Alice and Bob and Whit and Martin: Public Key Crypto

    • John F. Dooley

    Pages 87-96

11. Back Matter

    Pages 97-99

    PDF

The science of cryptology is made up of two halves. Cryptography is the study of how to create secure systems for communications. Cryptanalysis is the study of how to break those systems. The conflict between these two halves of cryptology is the story of secret writing. For over 2,000 years, the desire to communicate securely and secretly has resulted in the creation of numerous and increasingly complicated systems to protect one's messages. Yet for every system there is a cryptanalyst creating a new technique to break that system. With the advent of computers the cryptographer seems to finally have the upper hand. New mathematically based cryptographic algorithms that use computers for encryption and decryption are so secure that brute-force techniques seem to be the only way to break them – so far. This work traces the history of the conflict between cryptographer and cryptanalyst, explores in some depth the algorithms created to protect messages, and suggests where the field is going in the future.

• AES
• Cryptographic Algorithms
• Cryptology
• DES
• Herbert Yardley
• Public-Key Cryptography
• Quantum Cryptography
• RSA
• Vigenere Square
• William Friedman

From the reviews:

“The primary value of the work is for those interested in the development of DES and AES, or for those working on the key exchange issue, which lies at the heart of the RSA algorithm. It will also be useful for readers who might want to use it as a text in computer security courses, especially since that is how the author intended it in the first place.” (G. Mick Smith, Computer Reviews, March, 2014)

• Knox College, Galesburg, USA

  John F. Dooley

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