IST 323 The history of Information Security

Development of Information Security

Here, I want to add a summary for the development of information security.

People began to protect the information they wanted to deliver when people invented characters. The proposal to protect information is to protect a secret or avoid misunderstanding. Under this condition, whisper, notes, expression in one’s eyes can all be considered as a kind of information security because all these ways to deliver information can be executed in more liberal ways. Like we can talk out loudly instead of whispering, we can post a paper instead of a little note and we can also talk instead of eye contacting. However, if these public methods to protect information came to the stage of history, how would the real information security work?

Steganography

In the history of information security, the way to assurance the security is developed with the development of technology, especially information technology. I think the history of information security can be separated to four parts.

1.      Classical Encryption Era (BC – Early 20^th Century)

2.      Modern Times of Encryption (1920s – 1940s)

3.      Modern Encryption Era (1940s – 1960s)

4.      Network Security Era (  Till now)

During the classical encryption era, people encrypt information manually. Manual encryption has low efficiency so that only high level information would be encrypted, like military intelligence. During that time, the most famous method of encryption was Caesar Cipher. Also, ancient Greek wrote characters on the wooden backing of a wax tablet before applying its beeswax surface to achieve steganography. Chinese people wrote the information in poems in ancient times. The information they wanted to deliver was every first letter of each line of a poem, but the whole poem was not related to the information so that others would not notice the information. Also, during Civil War, the Federal Army widely used code books to protect the information.

The Era of Classical Encryption was long. The development was slow because people did not invent a new way to store information. Since human can only write the characters on paper, we could not have an advanced way to protect the information. However, since our technology developed, how would the next three eras look like?

I will talk about the other eras in the next blog. 

Stories in Information Security #2 _ World War Two

Enigma

As long as people had invented characters, people have found the importance to protect the information the want to transmit, especially during the war time. All the empires wanted to protect the information. For Caesar, he invented the cipher method to protect what his strategy. For Sparta, they write the text on a stripe of sheepskin which circle on a wooden stick, then move the stick to protect the information. All these method are processed by human beings so that there will always be some artificial mistakes. Before the ending of World War One, Arthur Scherbius who was a electronic engineer from Germany. He invented a mechanical cipher machine in the year of 1918. He was so proud of this machine and named it Enigma. From that time, human began to encrypt information through machine. This was a significant improvement in the history of information security. During World War Two, German deployed 30 thousands Enigma for army. Although Enigma was a significant improvement, it still used the substitution cipher method which was almost the same method with Caesar Cipher. However, since Enigma was a cipher machine, it can list much more cipher solution than human can list. Based on the principle of Enigma, it can provide 10 to 114 square possibilities. Even after the Alliance captured several Enigma and learned the principle of it, the Alliance still face 10 to 23 square (76 bits) possibilities to solve a cipher-text, which means it was almost impossible for Alliance to solve cipher-text by enumeration method. In the end, Enigma was be cracked by Alliance because the mistake made by German operator and the capture of Enigma. Scientist believed that the crack of Enigma Machine helped Alliance won the WW2 2 years advanced. After the World War Two, with the development of computer, human began to try the more sophisticated method to protect information.

Stories in Information Security #1 -- Caesar cipher

Caesar Cipher

Information Security has been one of the most important sciences since human invented the way to communicate. Let's go back to the Roman Empire. In about BC 50, people did not have telegram or phone to communicate with each other. So when Caesar wanted to convey his orders or communicate with his subordinates, the first thing he would consider would be whether the enemies would understand what he said. What would Caesar do?

As an emperor, he did not want others learn what he was thinking about. So here comes to the Caesar Cipher or called Caesar Code. This method of cipher which used by Caesar may considered as the first time that humans using cipher to protect what they communicated with friends. Caesar Cipher is not only the earliest cipher method that humans used, but also the most widely used. The core of this cipher method is shift. It is a type of substitute cipher which means the plain text are substituted by another letter in the alphabet. Generally, scientists think that Caesar used D to replace A, E for B, F for C and so on. Then used A to replace X, B for Y and C for Z at the end. On the other hand, some people think Caesar used the Greek alphabet to substitute the Latin alphabet (not replaced in the order of letters). However, no matter how Caesar replace his plain text, the way to transfer the ciphered text to plain text (how the letters are shifted or replaced) was only known by Caesar's friends or generals.

Though Caesar Code was widely used at that time and it did have a strong result for Roman Empire, this cipher method is easy to break for us nowadays especially when there are spaces between every words. We can search for some easy words like "is" or "are" and find how much the letters are shifted. Then we can easily break the whole sentence. We can also use the frequency analysis to break Caesar Code. On the other hand, Caesar is not a strong method to cipher texts, but the idea of Caesar Code presented in many other methods of cipher.

Final Post

This is the final post about the first project. I want to talk about how the entrepreneurial idea come out of my mind. First, i want to talk about the origin of the idea. I went to have a travel to Qingdao, which is one of the most beautiful cities in China, and i found that it was very hard to travel. There were a lot of people at the destination and it was very hard to get a train ticket or plane ticket during holiday. So i wanted to establish a network for travel.

But i noticed that there were many websites doing this kind of services. So i want to make some different. At the same time, i found that the social medias like Face book and twitter, they are just word based. And some times they don’t meet our demand to find where our friends are and they are not safe enough for everybody can look at the information you write or the pictures you post online. So i got an idea to connect social media and travel together.

Then i got an idea to set up a social media which linked with 3D map so that my users can watch their friends on the 3D map directly. I think that it would be a good idea because people may be sick of today’s social media which there are only words and pictures on the network. So i want to set up a new kind of social media. People can view their friends’ status directly.

After that, i thought i should add something new into the website. So i got the idea to make a system of the cities. I could let my users set up the virtual cities online so that everybody can view these cities. In this way, people do not need to find the group they interested in for something they really aware of. In contrary, they can just follow the cities they aware of and get the last news from the ones they concerned about. I found that the traditional social media divides people from the group they like, and what i will do is to divide people with cities.

Finally, my idea came out. I just want to give people a different way to use the social media. I think my website and my way to use the social media will of course be a new experience. And it is not so difficult for me to realize my idea. Today, the Google map is a very modern example. Maybe i can connect my website with Google map so that my website can just start up. Then, with the number of users increasing, my website can become an individual one. I wish my website may come true one day.

Lecture 4

Summary: My entrepreneurial idea is about a new kind of social media. It will be totally different from Facebook or twitter. It won’t be characters based or picture based. It will be a website that give you more than the social activity which based on 3D technology. Everybody can find something they interested in from my website.

Lecture: I think that my website will be safer than the other websites. I will use the technology which similar to the Google Wallet. My users will have an experience to safe their privacies. They will not need to print their user’s name to log in their accounts. I think that five years later, people can use the camera to monitor their faces and log in their accounts.

I think the technology to monitor one’s face to verify a person will soon become a popular technology. And it of course is a safe way for users. I will develop a new software so that people even do not need to establish a new user’s name. Because the software can remember the user’s face and verify the user later. The users only need to think a name for their friends finding them.

Finally I want to talk about the privacy when use the website.  I think when we use the website like Facebook, it is really not safe. I can find any information about a person on Facebook if he or she use Facebook. I want to establish a system so that people can divide their friends to different groups. And pull the information to different groups so that person can control who to view their information and status. And I think it is really a time to change our ways of using social media.

Lecture about OS in my idea

Summary: My entrepreneurial idea is about a new kind of social media. It will be totally different from Facebook or twitter. It won’t be characters based or picture based. It will be a website that give you more than the social activity which based on 3D technology. Everybody can find something they interested in from my website.

In this lecture I want to talk about the operating system using on my website. Of course my website needs an operating system to run. And a good OS is very essential to me, because my website will be 3D based so that I need a strong OS to running my website. I think I will select MS Windows and IOS because these are very nice and many people use these two OS so my website will easy to spread.

Then I think I want the OS to be stronger, for example, the Windows is now support 3D, and I want it to be better. And I hope that the IOS will support it as well. Then I can develop a software to run in the GUI so that my users can log in my website directly.

In the end, I want to talk about the use of my website on the smart phone. Not like the word based Facebook, my website will be 3D based. So I really need to develop a good App for my website. But it may not be very hard, look at the google earth, it is 3D as well. Since there is an good example, that will be easier for me. And now the 4G is more and more common, so it will benefit me a lot to run my website on the smart phone with the Android, IOS or Windows OS. 

Blogger review

This blogger‘s name is Android Authority and this paragraph is about Could Android be on a downward track? This blogger is all about the Android. It introduces us all of the devices and information of Android.

This paragraph is about the future of Android. The writer said that it is a difficult time for the Android because the other companies like Microsoft and Apple released their lasted OS which is very nice. And the writer thought that Android should make some different or it may be beat by its opponents.

But i really don’t agree with his opinion. I think Android made a very good IOS for smart phones. Though MS developed a very good IOS, win8, as well and i have tried this gorgeous IOS on my computer, I think Android’s ice-cream sandwich is better and my phone is using that IOS right now. Then i want to talk about something about IOS6. Apple spent a lot of money and human on this IOS, but in the behind Jobs age, Apple has lost their biggest advantage of creation. Since IOS6 has changed a lot from IOS5, but it does make many stupid errors in this IOS. In addition, the latest iphone5 didn’t change a lot from iphone4S so that the users of Apple wouldn’t be satisfied. On contrary, Android did very well on everything, every new version of its IOS did improve a lot. The computing ability improved a lot every time. And the Ice-cream sandwich did very good. I think today, Android is the best OS in the most popular 4 OS. And the writer of this paragraph didn’t concern about the inner improvement of Android.

All in all, I really don’t agree with the writer and I support Android a lot.