Fundamentals of Cryptography and Encryption
Harold F. Tipton, Micki Krause · 2007
This chapter presents an overview of some basic ideas underlying encryption technology. The chapter begins by defining some basic terms and follows with a few historical notes so the reader can appreciate the long tradition that encryption, or secret writing, has had. The chapter then moves into modern cryptography and presents some of the underlying mathematical and technological concepts behind private and public key encryption systems such as DES and RSA. We will provide an extensive discussion of conventional private key encryption prior to introducing the concept of public key cryptography. We do this for both historical reasons (private key did come first) and technical reasons (public key can be considered a partial solution to the key management problem).