Encryption

Encryption

Meaning: Encryption is the process of encoding a message or information in such a way that only authorized parties can access it

This technology has been around for decades and has been used by various agencies, individuals and independent parties to transmit information between themselves.

One thing to note is that this prevent intermediate intervention but does not take into consideration the integrity of the information. I.e. if a third party may be able to decipher and alter the message this will not be noted by the receiver.

End-to-end encryption: this is still encryption but it makes sure that encryption is carried out on both parties, sender and receiver. With this not only is the message scrambled but only the sender and receiver can only decrypt the message.

How encryption work

This is a very complicated process that basically happens behind the scene but I will try and explain it in simple terms.

First you create a message that you would like to send.

Secondly the message is passed through a special software that will cipher the message making it unreadable. A public and private key is also created in the processes.

As per the terms the receiver is the only one that should have the private key but the sender will use the public key to encrypt.

Thirdly once the receiver gets the message he/she will use the private key to decrypt the message otherwise the message received will not make sense. Once these is done the message we be in plaintext and readable.

There are a gazillion encryption apps and algorithms we will have a quick look on the types and some algorithms used

Types of encryption

We have two types symmetric and asymmetric.

Symmetric: This has been around for a very long time it uses a secret shares key for encrypting and decrypting. The sender uses the key to encrypt and shares the same key with the receiver so as to decrpt the information. The downside to this is if a third party hets the secret key he can be able to read the message as well.

Asymmetric : also known as public key encryption(PKE). These uses two keys one is made public and the other private. You encrypt a message with the recipient's public key. The recipient can then decrypt it with their private key. And they can do the same for you, encrypting a message with your public key so you can decrypt it with your private key.

Advantage of these you do not need anyone’s private key to cipher the message when sending to them.