RSA encryption

RSA Algorithm

The idea for a public-private key cryptosystem originally came from Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman in 1976, when they published the concept. The original algorithm they created used a shared key created from a number, modulo a prime number. Over the years, many people worked on trying to create a function that would be easy to do one way, but very hard to invert (do it the other way). The final algorithm was completed when, one night, Ron Rivest had a “good deal” of wine at a Passover dinner. Rivest then went home and spent the night finalizing the formula and had the paper to present it almost ready by the next day.

               How does it work? RSA uses a public key and a private key to encrypt data. The public key is meant to be public and to be spread and known by anyone wanting to send a message to the owner of the public key. The private key is mathematically linked to the public key and allows a message encrypted using the public key to be decrypted by using the private key that it is linked with. The keys for RSA encryption are created by using math on two distinct prime numbers to mathematically calculate the private and public keys.

               What makes this special? RSA encryption allows us to encrypt data and ensure that only the user holding the private key can decrypt it. It also allows us to be able to spread around a public key so that someone that wants to send a message us able to encrypt it and ensure that it’s for our eyes only. The algorithm is also designed to be very easy to encrypt data, but trying to crack the encryption is very hard without the private key, giving the users greater security.

               Could we do this algorithm manually? Yes, you could do the math behind calculating the keys and encrypting/ decrypting manually, but the math would be very long and tedious. For the keys to be as secure as possible, you must select large prime numbers and this would be very difficult for a human to do the calculations, so they are almost exclusively done by computers.

               I’m currently very excited to read chapter 6 of “The Pattern on the Stone” because that chapter talks about “secret codes”. I’m hoping they cover a little about RSA type encryption because it’s very commonly used today. I had lunch with Eugene Vasserman, a professor at KSU about a year ago and when handing me his business card, he pointed out the PGP encryption public key on the back of the card. by using this PGP public key, I could encrypt a message that would be just for Prof. Vasserman, much like RSA.

               A video I would recommend watching to get more information about the math behind the RSA algorithm is Here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXB-V_Keiu8. This video is from Khan Academy and helps to explain the math and reasoning behind the way it encrypts data and why we encrypt data using RSA instead of having a shared private key between two people so that they may share messages. The video uses the example of a bank sending messages, and if the bank had to have a specific key for each member, it would have too many keys to keep track of, but if it can have one key to decrypt all messages it receives, this allows the bank to communicate much more effectively. I would highly recommend checking out the video for a great explanation, and maybe searching YouTube for other videos to explain RSA encryption in more depth.

               

CIS 115 Personal Biography

My name is Josh Riess and I’m from Overland Park, Kansas. I’m currently a freshman at Kansas State University majoring in Computer Science. I chose to come to Kansas State because of the spectacular college of engineering as well as the location, close enough to drive back in a day, but not too close where my parents would be inclined to pop in on me. I am interested in computer science because of the security aspect of it, as well as the fact that I have always been fascinated with computers and how they work and what I can do with them. My hobbies include working on my home network and servers, Scouting, camping, and hiking. My favorite thing is to mess around with my home network and try to set up servers with different services that all work together. I have an older sister and a younger brother and a loving mother and father. I worked at CommunityAmerica Credit Union for the past 2 summers as well as after school for my senior year. I worked as a paid intern in the Solution Center, their help desk that also did so much more than a normal help desk. I spent my first months doing things such as moving computers around for employees moving locations, placing PCs for new employees, and pulling hardware for employees that left the credit union. We also had another company in our building named TruHome Solutions. TruHome contracted the Information Services department of CommunityAmerica to do their support and manage their infrastructure needs. In the final few months of my internship, I ended up taking phone calls from the solution center phone queue as well as taking tickets from the email ticket system. I would spend my entire 5 hours at work taking calls from employees and trying to fix them. I had at my disposal a program that allowed me to remotely connect to someone’s computer and take control of it, I even had the ability to lock their keyboard and mouse if need be. On other days, I would spend 5 hours in the back up position, watching the email ticket queue and taking calls if the on call person was swamped and needed my help. This internship gave me lots of good experience and also a fall back plan for if I can’t find a job later on in life, because I’m sure they’ll be happy to have me back and not have to train someone new from the ground up. After I graduate, I plan on finding a job related to Cyber Security. The actual job I will look for depends on if I decide to try to get the SFS scholarship for students planning on going into the cyber security field (link Here). If I succeed in getting the scholarship, I would be required to work in the government for 2-3 years, depending on how long I am on the scholarship. The textbook chapters that I am most looking forward to getting in to are chapters 6 and 8. Chapter 6 in “Memory: Information and Secret Codes” and chapter 8 is “Computers That Learn and Adapt”. For my news related to technology and computers, I usually go to Google News and look at the “Technology” tab. I also have tabs added for Hacking, Cyber Security, and Servers. For my information specifically about Cyber Security, I rely on an email that I get every day called “The Cyberwire”. I signed up for their emailing list a few months ago, and I receive information on the world of hacking/cyber security every day. In addition to just the facts, The Cyberwire also adds some explanation for the information.