You could do worse than to confuse the meanings of "code" and "cipher"—even cryptographers sometime use the terms as though they had the same meaning. There is, however, a definite distinction between ...

The arena of creating secure environments in the hardware and software industries is somewhat shrouded in mystery and misunderstanding. Certainly, some types of ciphers are relatively straightforward ...

In the context of cryptography, the un-transformed message is known as plaintext, the transformation is known as encryption and the transformed message is known as ciphertext. The encryption process ...

Learn how to implement a classic substitution cipher in C! This step-by-step tutorial walks you through encoding and decoding messages by replacing each letter with another according to a fixed key. A ...

In Part I, you broke a simple cipher. Now try creating a more complex cipher. Cut out the NOVA Decoder Ring and NOVA Cipher Code Ring and the window marked INDEX. You are now going to put this simple ...

All products featured on WIRED are independently selected by our editors. However, we may receive compensation from retailers and/or from purchases of products through these links. A few months ago, ...

Encryption is an essential tool for protecting data—but the technology can be a bit confusing. This ebook explains what encryption is, how it works, and why it’s so important. From the ebook: ...