7 Important Encryption Techniques You Need To Know About

[Batu69]

Though Encryption is not a new topic, you might have heard it online, while doing purchases, etc. Whats App messages are protected with end-to-end encryption. Your credit card details, id& password, payment information are transferred over an encrypted network. You might have already read these things on various sites and services.

 

So, every time you read about or heard of encryption, what was the first thing that came to your mind? Most of the people would think that encryption is complex, has something to do with security and only computer programmers or geeks can understand it. But it is not that complicated you might be thinking right now. I mean the encryption techniques you may find hard to understand but the basic essence of encryption and decryption is very simple.

So,

What is Encryption?

In simple words, Encryption is the process of encoding a data in such a way that only intended or authorized recipient can decode it.

Encryption does not secure the data but it makes your data un-readable to other parties. Which means, even if an unauthorized person or hacker is able to read the network he/she won’t be able to make any sense out of it without the correct decryption key. The science of encryption and decryption is called cryptography.

 

Why is Encryption important?

In today’s scenario, we perform a lot of data exchange online. When much of your personal information and financial transactions are processed via the Internet, no business or individual can afford to get their data stolen.

 

Not only the financial data or business files, even the messages we exchanged with our friends, the photos/files shared with family or emails sent to our clients, we need encryption for all of these data.

 

Cybercrime is already at its peak. Nothing is really safe. We witness cases of identity theft on daily basis. 

 

 

Keeping your personal data secure while using the system or at your end can be done. But when the same information is sent over the Internet, you want that information to be only viewed by the particular person and no one else. The data is first sent to the local network and then travels to Internet Service Provider.

 

Finally, a person for whom the information was meant for, finally receives it. Meanwhile, there are numerous of people who can access your information that you are sending. That is the reason why encryption is important.

 

Individuals use it to protect personal information, businesses use it to protect corporate secrets and government uses it to secure classified information.

Basic Encryption Techniques For Network Security You Should Know About

The strength of encryption is measured by its key size. No matter how strong encryption algorithm is being used, the encrypted data can be subjected to brute force attacks. There are some basic encryption techniques that are used by online services and websites that you should know about.

1. AES (Advanced Encryption Standard)

Advanced Encryption Standard is a symmetric encryption technique. Symmetric encryption means it involves secret key that could be a number, word or a string of random letters which is known to both sender and receiver. This secret key is applied to messages in a particular way after which the data becomes encrypted. As long as the sender and recipient know the secret key, encryption and decryption can be performed.

 

 

AES is extremely efficient in 128-bit form and it uses 192 and 256 bits for encryption purposes. In present day cryptography, AES is widely supported in hardware and software with a built-in flexibility of key length. The security with AES is assured if and only if it is implemented correctly with the employment of good key management.

 

AES-256 bit is a very heavy and strong encryption. Most of the governments use it.

2. Blowfish Encryption

Blowfish is symmetric cipher technique ideal for domestic and exportable purpose as this symmetric cipher splits messages into blocks of 64 bit each and then encrypts them individually. Blowfish encryption technique can be used as a drop-in replacement for DES. The technique takes variable length key varying from 32 bits to 448 bits.

 

Blowfish is found in software categories ranging from e-commerce platform from security passwords to various password management tools. It is one the most flexible encryption methods available.

3. RSA Encryption

The Rivest Shamir Adleman (RSA) encryption technique is one of the most popular and secure public key encryption methods. This public key encryption technique is also known as asymmetric cryptography that uses two keys, one public and one private. In RSA encryption technique, both public and private key can be used to encrypt the message. But for the decryption of the message, the opposite key that has been used for encryption will be used. Most of the times, the data is encrypted with public key and decrypte using the private key.

 

 

RSA encryption method assures the confidentiality, authenticity, integrity and non-reputability of electronic communication and data storage.

4. Triple DES Encryption

Triple DES encryption method is a more secure procedure of encryption as the encryption is done three times. Triple DES encryption technique takes three keys each of 64bit, so overall key length is 192bis.

 

The data is encrypted with the first key, decrypted with the second key and then again encrypted with the third key. The procedure of decryption is somewhat same as the procedure included in encryption expect that it is executed in reverse.

5. Twofish Encryption

Twofish is a symmetric block cipher method, in which single key is used for encryption and decryption. Twofish could be the best choice when among AES techniques as this encryption technique is unique in terms of speed, flexibility, and conservative design.

 

Twofish is new encryption technique which is highly secure and flexible. This encryption technique works extremely well with large microprocessors, dedicated hardware, and 8-bit or 32-bit card processors. Also, twofish encryption technique can be used in network applications where keys tend to change frequently and in various applications with little or no ROM or RAM available.

6. DES Encryption

Data Encryption Standard (DES) is symmetric block cipher which uses 56-bit key to encrypt and decrypt 64-bit block of data. The Same key is used to encrypt and decrypt the message, so both the sender and the receiver should know how to use the same private key. DES has been suspended by more secure and advanced AES encryption technique and triple DES encryption techniques.

7. IDEA Encryption

International Data Encryption Algorithm (IDEA) is another block cipher encryption technique that uses 52 sub keys, each 16-bit long. This technique was used in pretty good privacy version 2.

Conclusion

Encryption is a standard method for making a communication private. The sender encrypts the message before sending it to another user. Only the intended recipient knows how to decrypt the message. Even if someone was eavesdropping over the communication would only know about the encrypted messages, but not how to decrypt the message successfully.

 

 

Thus in order to ensure the privacy in electronic communication, various encryption techniques and methods are used. As with the growth of electronic commerce and Internet, the issue of privacy has forefront in electronic communication.

 

In this era of internet, where every kind of data is transferred in digital format, it is important that we know how our data is transferred, saved and used. Everyone must know about these basic encryption techniques. You can share this information with your friends and family to make them aware of encryption techniques.

 

Article source

[Error0101]

I already known about 5 of them .

[okru]

The most secure symmetric algorithm is Serpent....

 

source : 
https://veracrypt.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=Serpent

 

Serpent

Designed by Ross Anderson, Eli Biham, and Lars Knudsen; published in 1998. It uses a 256-bit key, 128-bit block, and operates in XTS mode (see the section Modes of Operation). Serpent was one of the AES finalists. It was not selected as the proposed AES algorithm even though it appeared to have a higher security margin than the winning Rijndael [4]. More concretely, Serpent appeared to have a high security margin, while Rijndael appeared to have only an adequate security margin [4]. Rijndael has also received some criticism suggesting that its mathematical structure might lead to attacks in the future [4].

In [5], the Twofish team presents a table of safety factors for the AES finalists. Safety factor is defined as: number of rounds of the full cipher divided by the largest number of rounds that has been broken. Hence, a broken cipher has the lowest safety factor 1. Serpent had the highest safety factor of the AES finalists: 3.56 (for all supported key sizes). Rijndael-256 had a safety factor of 1.56.

In spite of these facts, Rijndael was considered an appropriate selection for the AES for its combination of security, performance, efficiency, implementability, and flexibility [4]. At the last AES Candidate Conference, Rijndael got 86 votes, Serpent got 59 votes, Twofish got 31 votes, RC6 got 23 votes, and MARS got 13 votes [18, 19].*

* These are positive votes. If negative votes are subtracted from the positive votes, the following results are obtained: Rijndael: 76 votes, Serpent: 52 votes, Twofish: 10 votes, RC6: -14 votes, MARS: -70 votes [19].

 

 

Regards,

okru / 04May2017

 

 

 

 

[Atasas]

unsrue if worth a new topic or it is better to post here, but couldn't find this one posted

http://thehackernews.com/2017/03/wikileaks-cia-vault7-leak.html

10 Things You Need To Know About 'Wikileaks CIA Leak'

 Wednesday, March 08, 2017

[David_N]

Some more encryptions websites use for password are here

 

MD5

MD5 was developed by Professor Ronald Riverst and was used to create digital signatures. It is a one way hash function and intended for 32 bit machines. It replaced the MD4 algorithm.

SHA 1

SHA 1 is a hashing algorithm similar to MD5, yet SHA 1 may replace MD5 since it offers more security

[Soze]

Rsa with big key seems to be most secure.

 

 

[Jogs]

5 hours ago, Soze said:

Rsa with big key seems to be most secure.

 

 

NSA with big super computers makes everything insecure. 😜