Ancient Encryption
This ancient Greek king tattooed a secret message on a slave’s scalp to transmit military information.
Who is Histiaeus?
Device used in medieval Europe featuring rotating disks to encrypt messages.
What is Alberti’s cipher disk?
German encryption device famously decrypted by Allied forces during WWII.
What is the Enigma machine?
Widely-used symmetric encryption standard adopted in 2001 to replace DES.
What is AES (Advanced Encryption Standard)?
The property of quantum mechanics allowing particles to be in multiple states simultaneously.
What is superposition?
This simple substitution cipher shifts letters by a fixed number in the alphabet.
What is the Caesar cipher?
Renaissance diplomat known as the father of Western cryptography.
Who is Leon Battista Alberti?
British mathematician credited with breaking the Enigma cipher.
Who is Alan Turing?
Encryption method using two keys, a public key and a private key.
What is asymmetric encryption (public-key encryption)?
Quantum phenomenon where particles remain interconnected, instantly affecting each other over distance.
What is quantum entanglement?
Ancient Spartan cipher involving a rod of specific diameter around which a parchment is wrapped.
What is the Scytale cipher?
Cipher named after a French diplomat involving a table of alphabetically shifted rows.
What is the Vigenère cipher?
Japanese encryption system broken by U.S. cryptanalysts, significantly aiding the Battle of Midway.
What is JN-25?
Cryptosystem invented by Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir, and Leonard Adleman in 1977.
What is RSA encryption?
Encryption method using quantum mechanics principles, making eavesdropping detectable.
What is Quantum Key Distribution (QKD)?
Julius Caesar used a cipher shifting letters by how many positions?
What is 3?
Cipher used extensively by Mary, Queen of Scots, broken by cryptanalyst Thomas Phelippes.
What is the Babington Plot cipher?
American indigenous language used as a code by the U.S. military in WWII.
What is Navajo code (code talkers)?
The security protocol widely used to encrypt internet communications, replacing SSL.
What is TLS (Transport Layer Security)?
Protocol developed in 1984 for secure quantum communication.
What is BB84?
This ancient Egyptian writing system, once undecipherable, acted like an early form of symbolic encryption.
What are hieroglyphics?
Author who described early cryptographic methods in the 16th-century work "Polygraphiae."
Who is Johannes Trithemius?
Polish cryptologist who initially broke Enigma prior to WWII.
Who is Marian Rejewski?
Technique ensuring that data remains confidential, available, and unaltered during transmission.
What is end-to-end encryption?
Term describing the potential of quantum computers to break current cryptographic standards.
What is quantum cryptanalysis or quantum threat?