History of Cryptography

The idea of using cryptography has existed for hundreds of years!

• One of the first pieces of evidence of using cryptography was found on the tomb of an Ancient Egyptian nobleman back in 1900 BC, not to hide information but to beatify and dignify text.
• Around 100 BC, Julius Caesar used encryption to ensure that his soldiers were the only ones who could understand messages to his army generals. The encryption system he used is called a substitution cipher (also: Caesar cipher); we'll explain more in the next slides.
• In the 16th century, the French cryptologist Blaise de Vigenère described an encryption algorithm called the Vigenere Cipher that uses a key. More on this in the upcoming slides.
• In the 1920s - 1970s, Enigma machines created complex letter substitutions that change with every key press of the machine.
• The 20th century saw the creation of the advanced ciphering standard DES and, in 1997, a far more secure AES standard, which is used nowadays.