[Buddha90]

Hi everyone, this is my first post on this forum, so just wanted to begin with a HI

I wanted to hear if anyone could sum up the basic science behind modern day encryption ? I'm writing a small paper in school about the German encrypting machine "Enigma" that was used during WW2, dunno if you know it. But anyways one of my topics in this paper is to compare the encrypting methods between Enigma and modern days encrypting. I could maybe read something in books and so on, but it's a small paper which we only got a week to do, ending friday....

I know that a key is used in a certain logarithm and this logarithm encrypts the message. Then you would need the same key, or another, to decrypt the message in the right way. f(x) encrypts the message and f(x)^-1 decrypts the message. But I don't see how the key fits into this.

Hope that someone can help me with this, in a not to complex language

[Advertisements]

Better if you read articles like "Public Versus Private Key Encryption". Other good ones:

History of Encryption
NSA encryption systems

And I enjoyed the history of the Enigma Machine.

[Major Payne]

Better if you read articles like "Public Versus Private Key Encryption". Other good ones:

History of Encryption
NSA encryption systems

And I enjoyed the history of the Enigma Machine.

[Buddha90]

Thnx for the links.

I still don't understand how a different key can make a algorithm encrypt a plaintext in different ways ?

Is it because the key is embedded as a number or something in the algorithm ?

[dsenette]

Is it because the key is embedded as a number or something in the algorithm ?

no....every algorithm has a reverse version...that's what the f(x)-1 is.... f(x) is the function of x so the function of x to the -1 power goes the opposite direction of f(x)....so if you know the function (i.e. the algorithm) then you can find x

[Buddha90]

Sorry if I seem stupid

But how does a key then effect the encryption ? Does the key determine the function ? So that every key results in different functions, and therefore different output ?