Where do the encryption algorithm names come from? I've started compiling a short list...
- SHA-1 (Secure Hashing Algorithm) - Apparently not so secure anymore.
- DES (Data Encryption Standard) - DES's ancestor was called Lucifer. DES works with a 56-bit key while Lucifer used a 128-bit key. Many people believe that the NSA's interference caused this smaller key size in DES (otherwise the government would not have been able to break any encrypted messages).
- RSA (Rivest, Shamir, Adleman) - Should have been ARS (alphabetically). But Adleman insisted that Rivest be put first, as he made the major breakthough that made public key encryption possible.
- Rijndael (Rijmen + Daemen) - Is the Advanced Encryption Standard that will replace DES.
You know you're a geek when you wake up at night thinking about cryptography. I've been reading Simon Singh's Code Book. The book describes in detail how cryptography has evolved over the ages. For example - Julius Caesar himself used to use a simple form of encryption. In the cipher alphabet, each letter would be shifted a number of spaces to the right (see below).
normal alphabet: a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q ...
cipher alphabet: y z a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o ...
So the word “hello“ would become “fcjjm“. This became known as the Caesar Cipher. Ovbiously this was a very easy one to break as it only had 26 possible cipher alphabets.
The Code Book is an excellent read. I blame this new-found interest in cryptography on The Da Vinci Code.