16.1 Cryptography

When people need to secretly store or communicate messages, they turn to cryptography. Cryptography involves using techniques to obscure a message so outsiders cannot read the message. It is typically split into two steps: encryption, in which the message is obscured, and decryption, in which the original message is recovered from the obscured form.

Adapted from Math in Society by David Lippman, hosted on LibreTexts (math.libretexts.org) and licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0. Changes were made. License: CC-BY-SA-3.0.