Preface
By encryption, we mean a process of converting information to a disguised form in order to send it across a potentially unsafe channel. The reverse process is called decryption. Using strong encryption techniques, sensitive, valuable information can be protected against organized criminals, malicious hackers, or spies from a foreign military power, for example. Indeed, cryptography used to be almost exclusively a tool for the military. However, in moving into an information society, the value of cryptography in everyday life in such areas as privacy, trust, electronic payments, and access control has become evident. In this way, the field of cryptography has broadened from classical encryption techniques into areas such as authentication, data integrity, and non-repudiation of data transfer.In the following, basic terminology and the main methods of cryptography are presented. Any opinions and evaluations presented here are speculative, and neither the authors nor SSH can be held responsible for their correctness - although every attempt is made to make sure that this information is as correct and up-to-date as possible.
