The Study of Keeping Secrets Secret by Means of Cryptography

The Study of Keeping Secrets Secret by Means of Cryptography

Humans have always wanted to keep secrets. This work investigates the history of "keeping secrets", starting as far back as 4,000 years ago, and briefly covers the most important developments in the art of keeping secrets and cryptography. In this information age, cryptography (which is based on advanced mathematics) plays a fundamental role in on-line commerce, protects us from identity theft, and enhances the security of our personal electronic devices. These secrets are at an even greater risk to exposure than before because of technology. The Internet has allowed over 1,700,000,000 people all over the world to do endless amounts of communication and purchasing. However, some of these messages are not meant for everyone's knowledge such as your credit card information that shouldn't be shared with anyone else besides the seller. We investigate how math helps us keep our secrets. We also investigate how the exponential growth in computation power and communications has increased the need, and impacted the nature of secrecy.