-
44 BCE
Caesar Cipher
Also known as the "Shift Cipher" or the "Caesar Shift" is one the simplest cryptography methods. Originally used by Julius Caesar to send out military orders, at the time this would have been a secure method due to Caesar's enemies largely being illiterate or seeing it as a foreign language. -
May 7, 1470
Alberti Cipher
Leon Battista Alberti invented the Alberti Cipher that was the first polyalphabetic cipher. To support this cipher, he invented the Cipher Disk which made encryption / decryption faster, easier, and less prone to error. The Cipher Disk used a wheel structure instead of using a less practical table that was the standard at the time. -
May 7, 1499
Steganography First Recorded
Johannes Trithemius first to use the term steganography. He wrote a book on Cryptography and Steganography, called Steganographia, that was disguised as a book on magic. He went on to create the "Ave-Maria-Cipher that hid information in a series of words which was a legitimate prayer. -
May 7, 1553
Polyalphabetic Substitution Cipher
Giovan Battista Belaso described the first polyalphabetic substitution cipher that would be the basis for the Vigenere Cipher. This cipher was used for encrypting alphabetic text using a key. -
Vigenere Cipher
Blaise de Vigenere created a polyalphabetic substitution cipher known as the Vigenere Cipher. This cipher was a stronger version of the one created by Giovan Battista Bellaso and remained unbreakable for three centuries. -
Vigenere Cipher Broken
Charles Babbage Invented a machine that was used to break Vigernere's cipher. The cipher was broken in order to give Great Britain an advantage during the Crimean war. The Vigenere cipher was thought to be impossible to crack up until this point. -
Enigma Machine
Enigma Rotator was used by German Army and Navy during World War Two. It was created by Arthur Scherbius and provided secure communication for German for U-Boat submarines during the War in the Atlantic. The capture of the Enigma Machine and subsequent breaking of the German Code was important to the winning of the war by the Allies. -
One-Time Pad
The One-Time Pad is often considered synonymous with the term Vernam Cipher. Though some consider the Vernam Cipher to be a symmetrical stream cipher. Gilbert Vernam invented a method that used the Boolean "exclusive or" XOR function to encrypt one-time pads. The one-time pad is considered to be be an encryption technique that can not be cracked. -
VIC Cipher
Reino Häyhänen used the VIC cipher as a Russian spy to spy on the United States. The VIC Cipher was considered at the time to be the most complex pen and paper cipher ever created. The cipher resisted all crytanalysis attempts by the National Security Agency (NSA) and was not broken until Häyhänen defected to the United States. -
Data Encryption Standard (DES)
The Data Encryption Standard is a symmetric key algorithm for the encryption of information. When published by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) it was considered to be one of the first industry wide standards. DES was directed to be used by all US agencies and is considered to be a significant advancement in modern cryptography. -
Deffie-Hellman key exchange
The Deffie-Hellman exchange was the specific method of securely exchanging cryptographic keys over a public channel and was one of the first public-key protocols. This is one of the earliest practical examples of public key exchange implemented within the field of cryptography. -
RSA Algorithm
Ronald Rivest, Adi Shamir and Leonard Adelman created the RSA algorithm. The algorithm is used by computers to encrypt and decrypt messages. The algorithm is asymmetric and uses two separate keys. RSA was the basis for one of the first public key cryptosystems. -
International Data Encryption Algorithm
Xuejia Lai and James Massey created the International Data Encryption Algorithm (IDEA) to replace the Data Encryption Standard (DES). IDEA is a symmetrical block cipher using 64 bit blocks with a 128 bit key along with XOR functions. IDEA was used in Pretty Good Privacy (PGP). -
Pretty Good Privacy (PGP)
Pretty Good Privacy was created by Phil Zimmerman to encrypt and decrypt emails over the internet. PGP encryption uses a combination of hashing, data compression, symmetric key cryptography and public key cryptography. It was one of the first cryptosystems that offered security to the general public. -
Advanced Encryption Standard (AES)
The Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) was created by two Belgian cryptographers, Joan Daemen and Vincent Rijmen. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) selected AES to be the replacement for the Data Encryption Standard. AES is now the standard for the U.S. Government. AES uses a block size of 128 bits but has key lengths of 128, 192, and 256 bits. AES is based on the design of a substitution-permutation network.