What Is Encryption?
Encryption is the process of hiding information by encoding it. You've probably seen numerous examples of encryption, such as the cryptogram quiz in your local newspaper or the ROT13 encoding of material on the Usenet. If you aren't familiar with ROT13, it replaces a letter with the letter that is 13 places over in the alphabet. A becomes N, B becomes O, M becomes Z, N becomes A, and so on. The interesting thing about ROT13 is that you use the same process to decode ROT13 that you use to encode it. Because A becomes N and N becomes A, if you encode something with ROT13 and then encode the result again with ROT13, you'll end up with the original text you started with.
The ROT13 encoding for the phrase "the password is xyzzy" ...
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