And adopted more complex cryptography designs and became almost impossible to crack using old techniques based on smart card cloning and emulation on.
• People in the field of counterterrorism make a living by trying to crack the codes of other nations. Many attribute the success of the Allies in WWII to our ability to crack the Enigma code and uncover the plans of the Germans. • Others may try to crack more abstract codes that are not written by humans, searching for patterns within DNA models in order to understand their nature and be able to describe the nature of humanity. • It’s useful to try to crack your own codes to see how strong they really are. • There are many other reasons related to mathematical exploration, pattern recognition, etc. • Have students quickly share out reasons they came up with.
• There are a lot of different reasons that a person may want to crack a code. Some of them are more ethical (legal) than others. Encryption: Algorithms v. Keys Today, we will attempt to crack codes, paying particular attention to the processes and algorithms that we use to do so. So, before starting today we want to make sure that we distinguish between an encryption algorithm and an encryption key • An Encryption algorithm is some method of doing encryption. • The Encryption key is a specific input that dictates how to apply the method and can also be used to decrypt the message. Some people might say 'What is the key to unlocking this message?'
For example: • The Caesar Cipher is an encryption algorithm that involves shifting the alphabet • The amount of alphabetic shift used to encode the message is the key • When you are cracking the Caesar Cipher you are trying to figure out how much the alphabet was shifted - you are trying to discover the key. So, encourage the students’ curiosity and perhaps say, “I don’t know, but I bet you could look it up.” Cybersecurity is an enormous topic. If students get interested, they could dedicate their whole life to this field.
Test some passwords Try different passwords to see what the tool tells you: • Try typing common words from the dictionary or well-known names like “apple” or “chicago”. • Try typing something that’s over 16 characters. • Try a string of 4 random words together, like AppleChicagoBalletTree.
Then keep typing 0s and watch what happens to the statistics. (Actually, you might want to just hold 0 down for a while.) • Try other things that interest you. Answer Questions Questions are listed in: • Create a few passwords using 8 lowercase ASCII characters (a-z). What’s the longest amount of time-to-crack you can generate? • Using any characters on the keyboard, what’s the longest amount of time-to-crack you can generate with an 8-character password? • As you try passwords, what seems to be the single most significant factor in making a password difficult to crack? Why do you think this is?
• Opinion: Is an 8-character minimum a good password length for websites to require? Give your opinion, yes or no, and explain why you think that. • The AP CS Principles framework contains the following statement: Implementing cybersecurity has software, hardware, and human components.
Based on what you’ve learned so far, describe at least one way that cybersecurity involves “human components.” Hopefully you can now appreciate this comic. We want a world in which anyone can conduct secure transactions on the web; without this possibility, many things would be impossible.