Custom Encryption Since 1990

Develop secure authentication and authorization data cipher algorithms.

Did you know that industry standard encryption methods have vulnerabilities?  Think about it, if you have used an industry standard algorithm you are using an encryption method which the public knows about and is available for use.  Reverse engineering of encryption algorithms is common when they are made public knowledge.  Breaking encryption with sideways attacks is common knowledge.  New custom encryption methods derived from out of the box unconventional thinking kept close is security through obscurity. 

Quantum Thwarting

The future is encryption algorithms to thwart future quantum computer attacks.  This is especially needed with CBDC, crypto and transaction signatures.  I have been working with 4 NIST encryption quantum resistent algorithms and 2 NIST signature based technologies with digital currency/wallet transactions.

The algorithms are designed with two main goals for when encryption is typically used: General encryption, which is used to protect information exchanged across a public network, and digital signatures, used for identity authentication.  NIST said all four of the algorithms were created by experts collaborating from multiple countries and institutions.

My Background in Custom Encryption

I first started creating custom encryption algorithms in 1990.  So you have a better understanding on what encryption is take a few minutes and read more about encryption history below and learn how encryption is used today and which methods are more secure.  I can supply examples of certain encryption method vulnerabilities and how they have been broken.

Introduction

The U.S.  economy fundamentally changed in the last twenty years, as manufacturing and heavy industry moved overseas, replaced by a new focus on knowledge and data.  This transformation has underscored the importance of safeguarding information through encryption.  I typically focus on state-of-the-art encryption techniques used pervasively to protect data, such as personal identity, medical records, financial transactions, and electronic mail, to name a few.

A typical approach to security is to strike a balance between apparent risks to information and efforts to mitigate those risks.  A common standard used to determine the level of security required is "commercial impracticability" - if it takes longer to access critical data than the timeframe within which its knowledge confers some benefit, practical security has been achieved.  For example, if your credit card information is protected by a system that would take the most sophisticated hacker five years to unlock, but you obtain new credit card numbers every two years on average, there will be little benefit to 'breaking' the security scheme.

An important concept in security is that virtually any security system can and will be compromised eventually; it simply takes time.  For example, the Japanese never broke the code employed with great success by the Navajo code talkers in the Pacific theatre during World War II, but their code was only employed for a few years.  The success of that code was the use of words in a foreign and little-known language to represent military messages.  Had the Japanese efforts to decrypt the Navajo code focused more on linguistics than cryptography, it would have likely been just another broken security scheme in a long line of others.

Encryption

Although there are many ways to protect information from undesired access, including various physical security techniques that prevent any access from unintended receivers, it is most useful to safeguard data so that it can be transmitted over insecure networks, such as the Internet, without fear of compromise.  Since the time of the ancient Egyptians, cryptography, or the art of secret writing, has been employed to keep key information private.  History is replete with examples of the successes and failures of encryption; lives have been lost and the outcome of battles determined solely on the strength or weakness of a cipher.  This article examines the different forms of encryption, both symmetric and asymmetric, and evaluates the common algorithms and applications of encryption today.  Although you won't be a cryptographer after reading this article, you will have a better appreciation of the pivotal role encryption plays in our lives today.

Encryption algorithms or ciphers are mathematical formulas or functions applied to data to transform the unprotected information, or plaintext or clear text, into an unrecognizable format commonly referred to as cipher text. There are generally two inputs to an encryption algorithm: a key and the plaintext itself.  In some cases, the cipher text is larger than its associated plaintext or the same size.  The goal is to make the time it would take to recover or decipher the plaintext, having only the cipher text and not the key, so long as to greatly exceed the time-value of the plaintext.  Ideally, a strong algorithm and key combination should take at least millions of years to break, based on mathematical predictions.  Naturally, if an interloper manages to somehow obtain the cipher text and the key, deciphering the information is as straightforward as it is for the intended receiver, and therefore all security is lost.

Much of security is predicated on strong methods of keeping encryption keys sacrosanct, in order to force attackers to use brute-force methods, such as trying every possible key combination with the use of fast computers.  The ideal algorithm is strong, meaning that the algorithm itself is relatively impervious to direct attack, leaving attempts to derive or guess the key as the only practical avenue to breaking the encryption.  The ideal encryption algorithm creates unique cipher text from the same plaintext for each key permutation, among other traits.

Conclusion

The importance of computers and networks and the information they store and communicate to society today are equaled only by the threats to them.  The recent departure of Google from mainland China over a widely-publicized attack there on its e-mail system is an ominous reminder of the growing attacks on data and communication networks.  The encryption algorithms discussed in this article are in many instances the only protection between our critical information and those who seek to compromise and exploit it.  If you want to explore custom encryption, contact me.