I had already blogged about ‘Cryptography’ in a post long ago…to recap:
- Cryptography is the method of hiding information and sending them so that only the receiver can decipher them and understand them
- The original text is known as ‘plaintext’
- The original text is encrypted and this is known as ciphertext’
- The ‘ciphertext’ is decrypted to get the original text again
- The original text is encrypted and decrypted by means of a ‘key’ and an algorithm
Even though different cryptographic algorithms are created for secure communication between the sender and receiver, there are a number of attacks done by hackers to snoop and get the original text. Two such attacks are the ‘Known plaintext attack’ and the ‘Chosen plaintext attack’.
Known Plaintext attack:
In a ‘Known Plaintext attack’, the attacker eavesdrops and deduces the some part of the plain text and some part of the cipher text of the message. He/She then has to figure the ‘key’ or algorithm to break other encrypted messages.
This type of attack was possible with simple ciphers and not against the modern ciphers
Chosen Plaintext attacks:
The ‘Chosen Plaintext attack’ is similar to the ‘Known Plaintext attack’. Here, the attacker, chooses the plain text for any cipher and understands the ‘key’ and the algorithm. This can be used to perform other attacks against the cipher.
This type of attack is more powerful than the ‘Known Plaintext attack’.
We have seen two attacks in the wonderful world of ‘Cryptography’. Join me tomorrow for yet another comparative post…
The previous post can be found here