Cryptography Timeline

By Heather_Alene
  • 1900 BCE

    First Evidence

    The first evidence of cryptography found in main burial chamber of the tomb of Khnumhotep II, in Egypt. This wasn't necessarily a form of secret writing but was a transformation of the original text, to make the message appear more dignified ("A Brief History Of Cryptography", 2017).
  • 100 BCE

    Julius Caeser

    Julius Caesar used a form of encryption, a substitution cipher in order to relay messages to his generals posted on the front lines. This was known as the Caesar cipher and is accomplished by substituting each character of plaintext with another character. The Caesar cipher used a shift 3 where each character was shifted 3 places to form the cipher ("A Brief History Of Cryptography", 2017).
  • 1487

    Father of Western Crytography

    Leon Battista Alberti is known as the Father of Western Cryptography for his work and explanation of polyalphabetic codes/ciphers ("The Evolution Of Cryptography", 2017).
  • 1523

    Vigenere Cipher

    Blaise de Vigenere introduces the idea of using an encryption key to encode and decode ciphers. This was, supposedly, the first use of encryption keys in cryptography. The cipher was, however, easily broken ("A Brief History Of Cryptography", 2017).

  • Babington Plot

    Cipher was used to pass encoded messages from Anthony Babington to Mary, Queen of Scots, during a plot to remove Queen Elizabeth I from the throne and replace her with Mary. The plot failed as these messages were intercepted and decoded by Queen Elizabeth's spies, which ultimately led to Mary's trial and execution ("The Babington Plot", 2001).

  • Edgar Allen Poe

    Edgar Allen Poe published "A Few Words on Secret Writings", consisting of several articles on cryptography. He included cryptography in some of his own poems and challenged readers of his articles to submit ciphers for him to solve. One cipher never solved by Poe was finally solved in 2000 by Canadian Gil Broza. His favorite system is known as a "key-phrase" cipher (Van Slooten, 2012-2017).

  • Hebern rotor machine

    One of the first cryptographic rotor machines designed to encrypt and decrypt messages automatically using a single rotor, a disk with the secret key embedded and 26 electrical contacts on either side of the disk.The rotor rotated a gear each time a key was pressed. Because the rotor had 26 connections, the key settings would be reused after 26 characters. ("Hebern Rotor Machine ", 2013-2017).

  • Enigma Machine

    The Enigma Machine was invented at the end of World War I by German engineer Arthur Scherbius. It was used extensively by the German forces during World War II to encrypt and send secret military messages. While originally thought to be broken by British cryptographers, "...the Enigma machine's cipher was eventually broken by Poland and the technology was later transferred to the British cryptographers who designed a means for obtaining the daily key ("A Brief History Of Cryptography", 2017)."

  • VIC Cipher

    This complex pen-and-paper cipher was used by Soviet spies during World War II. The VIC cipher contains substitution, two transpositions and is passed through a straddling checkerboard to obtain substitution, then split in half. In 1957, Russian intelligence officer Reino Häyhänen defects and approaches the FBI with assistance in cracking this previously undecipherable code (Dankovich, n.d.).

  • Lucifer

    The first civilian block ciphers, known as Lucifer, wer developed by IBM as part of an experimental cryptographic system in response to customers demanding encryption. Lucifer eventually gave way to DES, which was also designed by IBM l ("Lucifer: The First Block Cipher", n.d.).

  • DES

    Data Encryption Standard (DES) is established by the US Federal Registrar for use by banks and financial institutions for secure electronic communication ("The Evolution Of Cryptography", 2017).

  • Diffie-Hellman Key Exchange

    Ralph Merkle, Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman introduce the Diffie-Hellman key exchange, which eventually lead to the public key system, which uses 2 keys; one that is private for decoding messages and one that is public, for encoding the messages. This eliminated the need for secure channels to pass encrypted messages ("The Evolution Of Cryptography", 2017).

  • FIPS

    DES is altered and renamed as the Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) ("The Evolution Of Cryptography", 2017).

  • PGP

    Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) developed by Philip R. Zimmermann and "...has become the de facto standard for email security" ("Pretty Good Privacy (pgp) ", 2000-2017). PGP is used to encrypt and decrypt email over the internet.

  • AES

    DES and FIPS officially replaced by the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) ("The Evolution Of Cryptography", 2017).