Introduction to Encryption

Encryption is a process used to encode information. It gained public attention in the early 90's as more and more people became concerned with the process by which their personal information would be transmitted over the internet from their browser to the server. Although there are many algorithms which can be used to perform encryption, some of the most famous ones are RSA, DES, BlowFish, and MD5.

SSL or Secure Socket Layer, is a protocol which can be used to encrypt data during its transmission between the client (such as a web-browser) and the webserver ( such as gigavoice.com ). SSL works by facilitating the selection and use of the encryption algorithm between two parties.

Essentially, a client comes to a server, which welcomes the client with an announcement of the SSL version, and the list of supported encryption algorithms. The client then selects a desired algorithm and initiates a handshake which thereby transforms the communication stream into from a plaintext to an encrypted format.

The strength of an encryption algorithm is usually measured by how difficult it is (mathematically speaking) to break the code and reveal the hidden information. Often words such as 128 bit, or 256 bit encryption simply refer to the size of the "key" used to hide the information during the transaction. The longer the key, the harder it is to reverse engineer.

Daniel Volkovich
GigaVoice