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3500 BCE
Cuneiform Emerges in Sumer
Between 3000 - 3500 BCE is when cuneiform emerged. Cuneiform is the act of making marks in wet clay with a reed implement. (Mark, 2011) This advancement is the birthplace of language and cryptography. Cryptography cannot exist without a language first to encrypt. Cuneiform could have been used to help write specific messages which would look unfamiliar to other clans or races. Mark, J. (2011). Writing. Ancient History Encyclopedia. Retrieved 2 April 2017, from http://www.ancient.eu/writing/ -
600 BCE
Greek Scytales are used in Ancient Sparta
The Greeks and Spartans created an early transposition cipher called a Scytale. It was one of the earliest methods that have been found of encryption. The tool was used to communicate in military campaigns. This impacted future military campaigns to deliver messages in secret. Djekic M (2013-11-25). A Scytale – Cryptography of the Ancient Sparta. Australian Science. Retrieved: Apr 01, 2017, from http://www.australianscience.com.au/technology/a-scytale-cryptography-of-the-ancient-sparta/ -
50 BCE
Julius Caesar employs the Caesar cipher
Julius Caesar used the Caesar cipher to communicate hidden messages during wartime. This took the regular 25 letter alphabet and shifted each letter forward by 3 positions. This was one of the most significant times in history where cryptography started to take hold. This cipher was used by many other military officers throughout the Roman Empire. This had a major impact during the Roman times as many messages were sent using this cipher. -
Apr 2, 845
Al-Kindi Creates the Frequency Analysis Technique
Al-Kindi created the frequency analysis in which he calculates the percentages of letters of a language in plain text. He then calculated the frequency of letters in cipher and substituted the symbols for the letters that have an equal percentage occurrence.(Al-Tayeb, n.d.) This impacted almost all the ciphers currently in use. This cryptanalytic method allows most ciphers to be cracked by using their frequency of letters against the cipher. -
Jun 26, 1467
The Alberti Cipher was created by Leon Alberti
The Alberti Cipher was created by Leon Battista Alberti. It was the first polyalphabetic cipher and could not be cracked by simple frequency analysis. (Servos, 2006). This was a great advancement in cryptography because it allowed for easy encryption and decryption. This cipher contained two discs that contained an inner disc and an outer disc. Combined with tables this cipher would take on variations that would advance humanity into further stages of cryptography and cryptoanalysis. -
Blaise De Vigenere Creates the Vigenere Cipher
The Vigenere cipher is actually a series of Caesar ciphers. This cipher is a polyalphabetic cipher developed originally by Giovan Bellaso, but improved by Blaise de Vigenere. It involved using a given key word to encrypt each letter of the message. A table was used to help encrypt and decrypt a message. ("Vigenere encryption", n.d.). This allowed humanity to take another step forward towards harder encryption methods. -
Charles Babbage Breaks Variants of the Vigenere Cipher
Charles Babbage broke the improved autokey Vigenere cipher that was introduced by Blaise de Vigenere. Babbage used this discovery to help the English military campaigns in the Crimean War. While Babbage did not break the cipher completely, he did break the "undecipherable cipher" version of the Vigenere cipher. -
Friedrich Kasiski Completely Breaks the Vigenere Cipher
Friedrich Kasiski is the first person to publish a written account of breaking the Vigenere Cipher. The method does not need to know either the plaintext or the key to break the cipher. This had a major impact on the area of Cryptanalysis and proved to break the "unbreakable" Vigenere Cipher. This lead to a renewed spirit among cryptographers to find a new and improved cipher. -
Gilbert Vernam Introduces the Vernam Cipher
The Vernam Cipher was one of the next big ciphers created in cryptography. The NSA even said it was the most important cipher in the history of cryptography. ("Vernam", 2012). It was created by Gilbert Vernam and it impacted the whole cryptanalysis world and cryptography world. This cipher is very similar to the One Time Pad. This is the only known unbreakable cipher in the world. The One Time Pad is actually derived from this very cipher. -
The Enigma Machine is Invented
The Enigma Machine uses letter substitution to cipher messages. It was created by Arthur Scherbius in 1918. This machine had major impacts going forward all the way up to WWII. This machine was used by the German Army to securely communicate between Nazis. It specifically had an impact on the Battle of the Atlantic as it was no longer possible to read the messages to and from German U-boats. This is because the Germans added a fourth and fifth wheel.("Enigma History", 2015). -
The US Navy Gains Help From the British and Dutch to Crack Several Japanese Navy Crypto Systems
The Japanese introduced JN-25 to communicate secretly between each other. The US Navy cracked that code weeks before the Battle of Midway. This allowed the US to successfully turn the tide in the Battle of Midway. The US Navy knew of the attack on Midway and successfully destroyed four aircraft carriers in Yamamoto's task force. (O'Neal, 2017). -
Colossus is Born
Colossus was the first electronic digital computer built during WWII. It was designed by Tommy Flowers and aided the British and US to break the codes that the German Lorenz SZ-40 cipher machine used. The US was unable to listen in on High Command communications until the Colossus broke the Lorenz SZ-40 cipher. This allowed US and British officials to listen in on messages that were communicated between German High Command at the highest level. ("Colossus", 2015). -
The VIC Cipher is Created
The VIC Cipher was created by the Soviets and used by Soviet spy Reino Hayhanen. This cipher was known during the Cold War as the most complex pen-and-paper cipher. This helped the Soviets communicate safely between each other. ("VIC cipher - polyalphabetic substitution cipher | Crypto-IT", 2016). This cipher allowed communication with just pen and paper with no computer involved. Reino later defected to the US and shared details on how to crack the cipher. -
The Data Encryption Standard (DES)
The Data Encryption Standard was created by IBM researchers in the early 1970's. It was not adopted by the US government until 1977 as an official Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS). (Rouse, 2017). This ensured that a standard was used throughout US agencies and industries alike. This impacted the whole cryptography world as it was the first encryption algorithm that was adopted by the US government. -
Diffie-Hellman Key Exchange is Created!
This exchange also goes by the exponential key exchange which uses digital encryption. The main idea of the Diffie-Hellman key exchange is that it is easy to compute powers modulo a prime, but it is very difficult to reverse this. The big impact was that the method showed the concept of "public-key cryptography", where people give out public information that enables people to send each other encrypted information. ("Diffie-Hellman key exchange", 1999). -
Pretty Good Privacy Encryption
Pretty Good Privacy was a popular encryption program to send email over the Internet and authenticate messages with digital signatures. It also had the benefit of encrypting stored files. This program was developed by Philip R. Zimmermann in 1991. (Rouse, 2017). Pretty Good Privacy impacted the cryptography world by becoming the de facto standard in email security. This program actually uses either Diffie-Hellman or Rivest-Shamir-Adleman (RSA) public key versions. -
Advanced Encryption Standard is Adopted
The National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) selected a new encryption standard called Advanced Encryption Standard (AES). This came from two Belgian cryptographers and it was the next big federal government standard for classified encryption. This had a huge impact on the world as there was a new and improved encryption method other than DES. As it became the new standard every industry adopted the new encryption method as it was more secure.
