ABSTRACT
The history of protecting the secrecy of information goes back to ancient times. The field of cryptography is devoted to methods that offer such protection. Sending secret messages, authenticating messages, distributing secret keys, sharing secrets, electronic cash, and electronic voting are only some of the applications addressed by modern cryptography. Symmetric key cryptography and public key cryptography are the two major classes of cryptography. Since prehistoric times, encryption conducted between two parties can be seen as a communication mechanism with a secret key shared between two communicating parties, where the knowledge of the encryption key implies the knowledge of the corresponding decryption key. The study of cryptography spans various fields from mathematics, computer science, and engineering, to non-science areas such as business and law. The goal of mathematical cryptography is to ensure the security of the most fundamental cryptographic components.
