Cryptography Basics: Encryption Types & Hashing Explained

 HELLO FRIENDS

WELCOME TO MY CYPHER LOG

       Today I came up with a topic which I wondered about what it will be from the first year of my studies in cybersecurity, The cryptography. 

In this blog we are going to un-wrap this topic and learn more about it.

LETS GET INTO THE TOPIC

CRYPTOGRAPHY

    You may think that it can be difficult to learn but actually there's nothing like that because I too thought like that about this, if you still think it's difficult I will explain it Like you want.

   Cryptography is encrypting data from a readable plain text to unreadable cipher text format.

Cryptography is like a knife It has both advantages and disadvantages. Its purpose varies based on who uses it, if you want to use it to protect data it can keep it secure, On the other hand if an attacker uses it he can create a massive bad impact like implement the attack the ransomware.

THE TWO MAIN TYPES OF CRYPTOGRAPHY

    As I have mentioned above it will change it to cipher text and encrypt the data. Now the question is, how can anyone who actually needs to know what is in that will know, that's why there is a key to unlock the encrypted data and change it into decrypted data.

It has two types which are symmetric and asymmetric. Let's start with the Symmetric key.

SYMMETRIC CRYPTOGRAPHY

      Symmetric cryptography is the exact same key used to both encrypt and decrypt data, 

To be more clear here is an example,

We all use a key for the house door, and we use the same key to both close and open that's how this symmetric cryptography works.

It has both pros and cons,

It's extremely fast and efficient and it is great for encrypting large amounts of data.

The consequence is,

While exchanging the secret key to another person there is a possibility of the hacker interrupting it, if the key is stolen the encryption is broken.

ASYMMETRIC CRYPTOGRAPHY

   It is bit different from symmetric cryptography and it is also known as public key cryptography.

It uses a pair of mathematically linked keys, a public key and private key.

The public key 

It can be shared with everyone, it is only used to encrypt the data.

The private key

It needs to be kept strictly secret by the owner.

Here is an example,

    If we just place our phone in a table unlocked anyone can turn it off by the power button but you're the only one who can turn it on because you only have the password.

This is how they work.

The systems like HTTPS use both, they use asymmetric encryption to securely exchange a temporary symmetric key and then use that symmetric key to encrypt the actual web traffic at high speed 

let's move into the next topic,

THE HASHING

   Hashing is like a one way where you can only encrypt the data but not decrypting that why I said it is one way.

Whatever the amount of data we feed in this it will turn it into a hashing algorithm and it spits out a fixed length of string characters.

If we put the same data it will give the same hashing even if it is hundred times.

Even changing a single comma can modify the whole output of hash.

Investigators use this to protect the evidence, if they seize any hard drive the very first thing they do is hash it and when they need to submit it they would recheck it if the same hash is the output.

  So that's it guys, I hope you guys understood it. Let's see in another new topic, stay tuned.

If you want to know more about this you can check it on this site.

                           THANK YOU