About Cryptography
This article is an introduction to cryptography. For further information
and how toÆs please refer to other articles within this book.
Cryptography is a technique used for encrypting (in our point of view)
files. A file could be anything; from a simple ASCII text to a complicated
zipped file or an executable. There are numerous algorithms used to encrypt
a file and they are practically unlimited methods to achieve this.
Hackman comes with an encryption algorithm
with its undo: the decryption of the encrypted
file.
Every encryption method requires a password. ItÆs a unique for every file or bunch of files sequence of Ascii characters (case-sensitive for us) which is used by the algorithm to produce a new file that has nothing in common with the original except of a mathematical sequence that helps us to go from one side to the other.
Note: in some cases the password for the encryption is the text to be encrypted itself. As you can realize, this procedure is one-way, you cannot decrypt the encrypted text, because you need to know it! This technique is used in web sites to hide passwords from users.