Computer and Information Security Handbook

Chapter 2

A Cryptography Primer

Scott R. Ellis, RGL Forensics

Man is a warrior creature, a species that ritually engages in a type of warfare where the combat can range from the subtlety of inflicting economic damage, or achieving economic superiority and advantage, to moving someone’s chair a few inches from sitting distance or putting rocks in their shoes, to the heinousness of the outright killing of our opponents. As such, it is in our nature to want to prevent others who would do us harm from intercepting private communications (which could be about them!). Perhaps nothing so perfectly illustrates this fact as the art of cryptography. It is, in its purpose, an art form entirely devoted to the methods whereby we can prevent information from ...