What is Cryptography and Its Types? 

There are several types of cryptography, including public key cryptography, symmetric cryptography, and asymmetric cryptography. These three types are used to secure communications and are important to secure data transmission. Let's learn about the difference between cryptography types and how they work. Cryptography is also used for privacy, as it ensures the data being transferred is private.

Public key cryptography

Public key cryptography is a type of asymmetric cryptography. It uses pairs of related keys, a public key, and its corresponding private key. These keys are generated by applying cryptographic algorithms based on mathematical problems. These algorithms generate the public and private keys. These key pairs can be used to communicate securely with other users.

There are a variety of public key schemes, including DSA and RSA. However, a number of them are susceptible to a brute-force attack, which requires a very large computation. Choosing longer keys increases the work factor. However, some public key cryptography algorithms are harder to break. To counter these attacks, special algorithms are developed. ElGamal and RSA are two examples of these special algorithms.

Symmetric cryptography

Symmetric cryptography is an important part of secure communication. The main difference between this system and public key cryptography is that symmetric cryptography requires two secret keys. Each party has one copy, while the other party keeps the other copy secret. This means that the recipient of the message cannot read it without the recipient's knowledge.

The key used in symmetric cryptography is a secret and must be kept secret. If a third party manages to find out the key, they can decrypt the message. That is why symmetric cryptography is not always secure. Despite this, the method is still useful for some purposes. It can be used for encrypting databases, files, or other data, although its disadvantages should not be underestimated. Symmetric cryptography has been around for a long time, and it is believed to have been invented thousands of years ago.

Asymmetric cryptography

Asymmetric cryptography is a form of encryption in which a pair of public keys is used to encrypt a message. This type of encryption is generally considered to be more secure than symmetric encryption, but there are certain limitations. For example, it is difficult to prove that a pair of keys is authentic. One method to address this problem is public-key infrastructure, which involves certificate authorities certifying the ownership of the key pairs. Other methods, such as PGP, use "web of trust" methods to prove that a pair of public keys is authentic.

Another weakness in asymmetric cryptography is the potential for chosen-plaintext attacks. These attacks can be performed on a communication system where one party knows the other's private key. When this happens, the entire security of the authentication will be compromised.

Transposition ciphers

Transposition ciphers are a type of encryption. They scramble the position of each character without changing the actual character. Instead, they reorder the units in plaintext in a regular system. The result is a permutation of the plaintext that is ciphertext.

Transposition ciphers have a number of advantages over substitutions. For example, they are resistant to frequency analysis. However, they are still vulnerable to breakage by cryptanalysts. Moreover, they need a large amount of memory to process the messages.

Transposition ciphers are often used in a combination with a substitution cipher. By using a combination of both types of ciphers, they are more secure.

Substitution ciphers

Substitution ciphers are a type of cryptography that conceals the meaning of a message. Instead of encrypting the message, the substitution cipher replaces each letter in the message with a different symbol. These methods are often weak and can be broken by statistical methods and frequency analysis. Examples of weak substitution ciphers include Keyword and Caesar Shift. Frequency analysis can break ciphertexts by counting how many times the same letter appears in ciphertext and plaintext. Al-Kindi used this method to study the frequency of letters.

Substitution ciphers can operate on individual letters or larger groups of letters. Some use a fixed substitution across the entire message, while others use a number of substitutions at different points throughout the message. In either case, the plaintext unit is mapped to several different possibilities in the ciphertext. For demonstration purposes, write out the alphabet in some order.