Criptografia

of the subject is Kahn’s The Codebreakers. This book traces cryptography from its initial and limited use by the Egyptians some 4000 years ago, to the twentieth century where it played a crucial role in the outcome of both world wars. Completed in 1963, Kahn’s book covers those aspects of the history which were most significant (up to that time) to the development of the subject. The predominant practitioners of the art were those associated with the military, the diplomatic service and government in general. Cryptography was used as a tool to protect national secrets and strategies. The proliferation of computers and communications systems in the 1960s brought with it a demand from the private sector for means to protect information in digital form and to provide security services. Beginning with the work of Feistel at IBM in the early 1970s and culminating in 1977 with the adoption as a U.S. Federal Information Processing Standard for encrypting unclassified information, DES, the Data Encryption Standard, is the most well-known cryptographic mechanism in history. It remains the standard means for securing electronic commerce for many financial institutions around the world. The most striking development in the history of cryptography came in 1976 when Diffie and Hellman published New Directions in Cryptography. This paper introduced the revolutionary concept of public-key cryptography and also provided a new and ingenious method 1 §8ccc8ccxccc8ccc8cc8§ § § § § § § § §…