In this lesson, students will learn and practice using the Caesar Cipher. The Caesar Cipher is an encryption method that predates computers in which each letter of the message is shifted by a certain amount, called the key.
Students will be able to:
In this lesson, students will practice using brute force and letter frequency to crack the Caesar Cipher. The Caesar Cipher is an encryption method in which each letter of the message is shifted by a certain amount, called the key. Cracking the Caesar Cipher with brute force (trying every combination) is a trivial matter for modern computers.
Students will be able to:
In this lesson, students will learn and use the Vigenère Cipher. The Vigenère Cipher consists of several Caesar ciphers in sequence with different shift values based on a keyword, so brute force and letter frequency analysis do not work.
Students will be able to:
In this lesson, students will review the Caesar cipher and history of cryptography until the present day to bridge to the current topic of advanced cryptography. They will examine a high-level view of “hard” vs. “easy” problems. Symmetric vs. asymmetric encryption and public-key encryption will be emphasized.
Students will be able to:
Identify the problems with symmetric key encryption and why modern cryptography involves more complex mathematics
Explain the difference between symmetric and asymmetric encryption
In this lesson, students will learn and use hashing functions. They will look at what hashing is, requirements of a good hashing algorithm, how hashing is used, what the ideal hash function does, collisions in hashing, and how hackers try to crack a hashing algorithm.
Students will be able to:
In this lesson, students look at hash function development by delving into modulo math. Modulo math is very important in advanced cryptography since it’s a one-way function where the output hides the input very well. This makes it useful in creating hashing functions.
Students will be able to:
