All you need to know about Encrypted Communication basics

Image courtesy of Intel Free Press at Flickr.com

Nearly every computing device we interact with on a daily basis utilizes some form of encryption technology. From smartphones (which can often have their data encrypted), to tablets, desktop, laptops or even your trusty Kindle, encryption is everywhere and it is a good idea to have some notions about this technology and know how to use it in case of need. Let's analyze the basic concepts:

We can define Encryption as the process of encoding messages or information in such a way that only authorized parties can read it. Encryption does not of itself prevent interception, but denies the message content to the interceptor. In an encryption scheme, the intended communication information or message is encrypted using an encryption algorithm. For technical reasons, an encryption scheme usually uses a pseudo-random encryption key generated by an algorithm. It is in principle possible to decrypt the message without possessing the key, but, for a well-designed encryption scheme, large computational resources and skill are required. An authorized recipient can easily decrypt the message with the key provided by the originator to recipients.

When we use the Internet, we're not always just clicking around and passively taking in information, such as reading news articles or blog posts, a great deal of our time online involves sending others our own information. Ordering something over the Internet from an online vendor, or signing up for an online account, requires entering in a good deal of sensitive personal information. A typical transaction might include not only our names, email addresses and physical address and phone number, but also passwords and personal identification numbers. The incredible growth of the Internet has excited businesses and consumers alike with its promise of changing the way we live and work. It's extremely easy to buy and sell goods all over the world while sitting in front of a laptop. But security is a major concern on the Internet, especially when you're using it to send sensitive information between parties.

There is a whole lot of information that we don't want other people to see, such as Credit card information, Social Security numbers, Private correspondence, Personal details, Sensitive company information and Bank account information.

Information security is provided on computers and over the Internet by a variety of methods. A simple but straightforward security method is to only keep sensitive information on removable storage media like portable flash memory drives or external hard drives. But the most popular forms of security all rely on encryption, the process of encoding information in such a way that only the person with the key can decode it.

How does it works?

Encryption is a modern form of cryptography that allows a user to hide information from others. Encryption uses a complex algorithm called a cipher in order to turn normalized data (plaintext) into a series of seemingly random characters (ciphertext) that is unreadable by those without a special key in which to decrypt it. Those that possess the key can decrypt the data in order to view the plaintext again rather than the random character string of ciphertext.

Two of the most widely used encryption methods are Public key (asymmetric) encryption and Private Key (symmetric) encryption.

The Public Key Encryption uses the recipient’s public key as well as a (mathematically) matching private key. With the public key you could enter new information to the storage but you wouldn’t be able to view items already in there, nor would he be able to retrieve anything. The private key is used for encrypting cipher text. On the other hand, with the private key you could open the storage and view all items inside as well as removing them as you see fit by using the matching private key. However you could not add things to the box without having an additional public key.

Image courtesy of Karl Baron at Flickr.com

The Private Key Encryption or symmetric encryption differs from Public Key encryption is in the purpose of the keys themselves. There are still two keys needed to communicate, but each of these keys is now essentially the same. Two users need two different keys, but with them, they both are allowed to encrypt a message as well as decryption it, so they are both allowed to add or remove things from the storage.

We can conclude that Encryption is safe. The amount of time, energy usage and computational cost to crack most modern cryptographic technologies makes the act of attempting to break an encryption (without the key) an expensive exercise that is, relatively speaking, futile. That said, encryption does have vulnerabilities that rest largely outside of the power of the technology. But no matter how secure the encryption, a backdoor could potentially provide access to the private key. This access provides the means necessary to decrypt the message without ever breaking the encryption.