Everything about Cryptography
Practice and study of secure communication techniques
Cryptography, or cryptology, is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of adversarial behavior. More generally, cryptography is about constructing and analyzing protocols that prevent third parties or the public from reading private messages. Modern cryptography exists at the intersection of the disciplines of mathematics, computer science, information security, electrical engineering, digital signal processing, physics, and others. Core concepts related to information security are also central to cryptography. Practical applications of cryptography include electronic commerce, chip-based payment cards, digital currencies, computer passwords, email encryption, secure messaging and military communications. Wikipedia →
🧠Start here: a 6-step reading path
- Read the overview: CryptographyA 5-minute orientation
- Skim a recent paper: Security in quantum cryptographyInfluential work since 2022
- Pick up a classic book: Alan TuringThe most-reprinted book on the subject
- Read the landmark paper: New directions in cryptographyCited 10,168 times
- Go sideways: Index of cryptography articlesA closely related topic
- Go sideways: Outline of cryptographyA closely related topic
đź“– Definitions
Noun The discipline that embodies the principles, means, and methods for transforming data to hide its semantic content, prevent unauthorized use, or detect modifications, while also ensuring information security through confidentiality, integrity, authentication, and nonrepudiation.
🗂️ The subject at a glance
🏆 Landmark papers (most cited)
New directions in cryptography
Quantum cryptography based on Bell’s theorem
Quantum cryptography
Quantum cryptography: Public key distribution and coin tossing
Quantum cryptography using any two nonorthogonal states
Quantum cryptography without Bell’s theorem
Advances in quantum cryptography
On lattices, learning with errors, random linear codes, and cryptography
🆕 Influential since 2022
đź“š Books worth reading
Alan TuringAndrew Hodges · 1983
The Code BookSimon Singh · 1999
The Code Book for Young PeopleSimon Singh · 2002
CryptoSteven Levy · 2001
FatherlandRobert Harris · 1992
The codebreakersDavid Kahn · 1967
Codes, Ciphers and Secret WritingMartin Gardner · 1972
Applied CryptographyBruce Schneier · 1994
Ranked by number of editions on Open Library, a rough measure of how lasting a book is.
đź”— Related topics
- Index of cryptography articles Articles related to cryptography include: A5/1 • A5/2 • ABA digital signature guidelines • ABC (stream cipher) • Abraham Sinkov • Acoustic cryptanalysis…
- Outline of cryptography The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to cryptography: Cryptography (or cryptology) – practice and study of hiding information…
- Cryptanalysis Cryptanalysis (from Greek kryptós 'hidden' and analýein 'to analyze') refers to the process of analyzing information systems in order to understand hidden…
- ElGamal encryption In cryptography, the ElGamal encryption system is a public-key encryption algorithm based on the Diffie–Hellman key exchange. It was described by Taher…
- Ciphertext In cryptography, ciphertext or cyphertext is the result of encryption performed on plaintext using an algorithm, called a cipher. Ciphertext is also known…
- Symmetric-key algorithm Symmetric-key algorithms are algorithms for cryptography that use the same cryptographic keys for both the encryption of plaintext and the decryption of…
- RSA cryptosystem The RSA (Rivest–Shamir–Adleman) cryptosystem is a family of public-key cryptosystems (one of the oldest), widely used for secure data transmission. The…
- Chosen-ciphertext attack A chosen-ciphertext attack (CCA) is an attack model for cryptanalysis in which the cryptanalyst can gather information by obtaining the decryptions of…