Cryptology: Revolutionary War And World War II

Encryption technique is the translation of data into a secret code that will prevent hackers or identity thieves from being able to break or read the data that is sent across the network.

When a fellow general received the message, he would wrap the paper around his corresponding scytale to decipher the message (Tyson 2014). Since the advent of computers though, encryption has become increasing important and relies almost solely on cryptographic means to secure information. When speaking about encryption today, it refers more to the process rather than the mathematical formulas used to scramble data. The basic idea behind encrypting a computer message is such that it is scrambled with a sequence of random bits, known as a key, and only parties with the corresponding key can transpose it back into a comprehensible format. These keys are created via a cipher, otherwise known as an algorithm. When a user sends a message, known as the plaintext, across a network, the computer applies an algorithm to the information to encode it, resulting in a ciphertext (Encryption Basics 2014). This method can be best summarized visually:

Encryption is the conversion of electronic data into another form, called cipher text, which cannot be easily understood by anyone except authorized parties. The primary purpose of encryption is to protect the confidentiality of digital data stored on computer systems or transmitted via the Internet or other computer networks. Modern encryption algorithms play

Moreover, encryption requires use of a key or cipher, which is used to lock and unlock the hidden data. Such a key is necessary to allow the hidden data to be viewed in an intelligible manner by those who are authorized to view it. However, there is always a risk that the encryption key might fall into the wrong hands, thereby allowing the information to be accessed by unauthorized viewers.

Encryption is a process that turns information that is plainly readable into scrambled form in order to preserve the authenticity, integrity, and privacy of the information that passes through the security perimeter (Michael E. Whitman, 2009). It is the conversion of electronic data into another form, called ciphertext, which cannot be easily understood by anyone except authorized parties (Rouse, 2014).

The Balloon Corps and the telegraph led the Union towards a victory against the Confederacy. Newfangled weapons took to the air in the Civil War; for example, Union spies floated above Confederate battle lines in hydrogen-filled balloons. Information would then be sent back to the North giving them an advantage on the plans of the South. The White House telegraph office enabled the president, Abraham Lincoln, to monitor battlefield reports, lead real-time strategy meetings, and deliver orders to his men. Here, as well, the Confederate army was at a disadvantage, for they lacked the technological and industrial ability to conduct such a large scale communication campaign. Over a million messages were sent to and from the battlefield by the Union

“[Union journalists]…are the direct cause of more bloodshed than fifty times their number of armed Rebels.” (LibertyBlog.org) This was stated by Union General William Sherman in 1863. He believed that too much information was being distributed to the enemy through letters and journalism. One solution to this problem was censorship.

A spiritual journey dominates these songs, but the concern for physical freedom is there as well. The most pervasive image in the spirituals is that of the chosen people for the slaves believed that they had been chosen by God just as the Israelites had. They also believed that they understood better than anyone what freedom truly meant in both a spiritual and physical sense. The Old Testament characters that the slaves referred to in their songs experienced deliverance by God. The slaves believed that the same God that had granted them spiritual freedom would someday loose the chains of slavery. The wonderful flexibility of the spirituals allowed for that double meaning of freedom. For example, Frederick Douglass claimed that the line” I am bound for Canaan” in one of the songs he frequently sang meant that he was going North, not just that he would experience the freedom of the promised land in a spiritual sense. The flexibility and multiplicity of meanings also allowed for slaves to use these sacred songs as secret communication. Some songs, such as “Steal Away to Jesus,” were used to call a secret meeting where the people could worship without the supervision of the whites. Other songs, such as “Wade in the Water” served as coded directions for runaway slaves. With the eventual emancipation of the slaves, religious music of African Americans became prominently

Communication in the Civil War was very important. The telegraph was the main invention that helped the Union soldiers win the war. The telegraph used 15,000 miles of cable wire. Abraham Lincoln would use the Morse Code to send the message through the telegraph to the person he was communicating with. The telegraph helped Abraham receive battle reports. This helped because he could tell

The soldiers in the war had a chance to visit other plantations where some of their family and friends were located. They sung to express their oppression and true feelings of this enslaved environment and the struggles that came with it. The songs used animal characters to supplement the slaves and their masters and were very popular and powerful. This was also a part of

During World War II, the Germans used a type of code that is almost impossible to break. They used this code to communicate between each other and would get directions of where to go and also state where their locations are through that code. What made that code unique was the way that they used it. The way their code worked would be that someone would write a letter in a machine, and then the machine would print a coded version of the message. But that was not the worst part of it. At the end of every day, they would change the key to the messages, all at the same time in a synchronized manner. The way that the Enigma machine was built made it even more complicated to understand. “There are approximately 150,000,000,000,000 - that is, 150 million million - possible combination” (Claire Ellis “Exploring the Enigma”). Alan Turing started working in a

The Revolutionary War was the birth of a new nation, and the birth of secret intelligence use. George Washington is given the credit for this development by most officials. Along with the use of spies, we also have the beginning of ciphers and coding in warfare. The beginning of this nation was the beginning of many institutions still essential to our society today.

Cryptography, at least in some form, has been around since 1900 BC where the first known evidence had been seen in an Egyptian tomb of a nobleman, Khnuhotep II. Here, there are unusual hieroglyphic symbols that the scribe used in the place of more ordinary ones that one would expect. It is thought that the purpose of changing these symbols, it was not to hide the message, but make it seem like it was more dignified. However, evidence of cryptography has been traced back to the most of the major early civilizations. Arthasharta, an ancient Indian treatise, helps tell of an espionage service and mentions secret writing that their spies had used on assignements. Julias Caesar also had his very own cipher. It was a form of encryption to relay secret messages to his generals that were on the war front. It is a substitution cipher, and the most widely mentioned in history. A substitution cipher is where a plain text message would have each character

Often slaves who attempted a secret education were penalised and this led to either disfigurement or even death. Certain slave writers focused on the quest for literacy which these slaves believed were in a way often linked with their personal quest for freedom. Slaves who managed to learn to read and write were the ones who were most likely to escape, because they could use their hard-earned knowledge to forge their own passes after having read about the successful escapes made by the other similar slaves from the other plantations. Like the Negro spirituals – religious songs sung by the Negroes – the slave narratives have had a profound impact on the contemporary American literature scenario. And like the lively negro spirituals — which often contained secret codes and messages that were decipherable only by the enslaved blacks — the slave narratives were considered dangerous and subversive by many of the slaveholders and these plantation owners feared that these narratives might lead to slave revolts and

Encryption is a method of programming data for security so that it appears to be random data. Only the people sending and receiving the information have the key to decrypt the message, which will put it back into its original form making it readable. The only people with the key are the people who are intended to read the message. Not many people know what encryption is. I took a survey of twenty students and asked two questions. The first question I asked was do you know what encryption means and the second question I asked was have you ever heard of anybody using encryption. This is a chart of the information I received: