Cryptography Reference
In-Depth Information
US Government made an encryption standard available (DES) to protect unclassified
but sensitive data. 11
Now, the rise of electronic commerce and mobile communication introduces a
new need for security. Industries also need to protect industrial secrets and trades.
Software manufacturers need to have secure and user-friendly license management
tools. Artists and major companies had a severe revenue loss because of peer-to-peer
media exchange platforms. More generally, most goods providers, not necessarily in
the information technology sector, want to implement easy tracing tools such as tags
using radio frequency identification (RFID) technology. It should be used in order to
optimize logistic, but it is a threat to people's privacy at the same time.
On the Academic Side: Research in Cryptology
At the same time that the US Government was pushing for an encryption standard, the
academic world in computer sciences was building complexity theory: the mathematical
notion of intractability , NP-completeness , one-way functions , etc. 12 The mathematical
notion of complexity became the natural root of information protection.
The academic world naturally discovered the notion of public-key cryptography 13 :
we could encrypt with a public key, but decryption without a private key had to face a
large complexity problem. 14
On the People Side: Towards Civil Cryptography?
At the same time that governments and industry were developing security applica-
tions for their businesses, people also wanted to protect their activities. The PGP ef-
fort (Pretty Good Privacy) by some privacy protection activists illustrates the need to
strengthen people's privacy by email encryption against governmental requirements. 15
Law enforcement, goods traceability, and license and media protection evolve in such
a way that automatic applications can implement them. This typically violates people's
privacy.
Even democracy management may be performed by machines since electronic
voting is being developed. Obviously this must be done under very careful concern about
the people's integrity. Since the present document is aimed at teaching cryptography,
the author would like to make the reader aware of the risks of a possible technologic
nightmare in preparation.
11
See Chapter 2.
12
See Chapter 8.
13
See Chapter 9.
14
For more details, see Ref. [175]. See also Ref. [116].
15
See Chapter 12.
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