Applied Cryptography in .NET and Azure Key Vault: A Practical Guide to Encryption in .NET and .NET Core

© Stephen Haunts 2019

Stephen HauntsApplied Cryptography in .NET and Azure Key Vaulthttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-4375-6_2

2. A Brief History of Cryptography

Stephen Haunts¹ 

(1)

Belper, Derbyshire, UK

 

The art of cryptography has been around since the human race first communicated in written form. In its earliest form, cryptography, or encryption, involved taking written notes and applying a mathematical process to it to make the message unreadable. Then the recipient could use the same method, known only to them and the sender, to recover the message.

When using cryptography, the original text that you want to encrypt is referred to as plaintext. It is called plaintext because, in its original form, it is just text. Once plaintext has been encrypted, ...