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3200 BCE
Hieroglyphics - Ancient Egyptians
Hieroglyphs were used by the ancient Egyptians over 4000 years ago. It is the oldest form of cryptography known as the code revealing the message of the hieroglyphs were only known to the scribes themselves. The scribes used hieroglyphs to transmit messages for the king. -
100 BCE
Cesar Cipher - Ancient Romans
The Cesar cipher is one of the earliest and most well-known cryptographic tools. Used by Julius Cesar to carry secret messages to his army generals, this simple form of encryption shifts the letters of the alphabet 3 places to the right to create the cipher text. -
Period: Jan 1, 1467 to Jan 1, 1508
The Vigenère Cipher - Italian Renaissance
During this time period Leon Battista Alberti and Johannes Trithemius created the Alberti Disc and the tabula recta which combined to create the Vigenere Cipher, the first poly alphabetic cipher. This much improved coding technique allowed more variables for moving letters in the cipher. Thus, creating a stronger and more complex system of encryption. This was triggered by Italian and Papal states after the Italian Renaissance who sought to create advanced cryptographic techniques. -
Wheel Cipher - Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson invented the wheel cipher consisting of 36 cylinder wooden pieces which could encode and decode messages. This wheel cipher was later used in WWII by the U.S. Navy as the Strip Cipher. -
Zimmermann Telegram - WWI
British Intelligence intercepted and decoded a telegram from the German Foreign Office which proposed an alliance between Japan, Mexico, and Germany in the event that the U.S. entered the war against Germany. The validation of the telegram by Arthur Zimmermann himself help generate public support for the U.S. to enter the war. The decryption of the telegram highlighted to impact signal intelligence could have on world events. -
The Enigma Machine - Germans WWII
German engineer, Arthur Scherbius invented the Enigma machine which was an electro-mechanical rotor cipher machine. German military forces produced their own version for encrypting their communications during WWII. A reconstruction of this secret machine allowed the allied forces to intercept and read German communications which help turn the tide in their favor during WWII. -
Period: to
Navajo Code Talkers - U.S. Marine Corps WWII
The Navajo code talkers were bilingual Navajo speakers who were recruited into the U.S. Marines in WWII to serve in the Pacific theater. Phillip E Johnson originally came up with the idea as a way to encrypt radio communications. The Navajo language was the least common among Indian speaking tribes and was virtually unknown to the rest of the world. The Navajo language became an unbreakable code that even when intercepted, could not be translated. -
Battle of Midway - United States Navy
The battle of Midway was a pivotal naval battle in which the U.S. defeated Japan in the Pacific during WWII. The victory at Midway was made possible when American cryptographers where able to decipher Japanese code and alert naval forces of the date and time of a planned Japanese assault. This victory is highly regarded as the turning point in the battle in the Pacific. -
National Security Agency
The Armed Forces Service Agency which was charged with controlling communications intelligence for U.S. government was found to be ineffective. A memo sent by Walter Bedell Smith to the Executive Secretary of the Security Council highlighting AFSA's failures resulted in the creation of the NSA. In addition to its founding, its role was intended to extend beyond the armed forces. -
Data Encryption Standard - IBM
In the late 1960's IBM began a research project that resulted in the creation of the LUCIFER cipher. After modifications by the NSA to reduce the key size it was chosen to be the U.S. Data Encryption Standard. It was also accepted worldwide and withstood 20 years of attacks. -
New Directions in Cryptography - Diffie-Hellman
In 1976 Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman combined to publish a paper titled "New Directions in Cryptography" which was the first to propose the idea of public key cryptography. Additionally the paper introduced the idea of the one way function. -
RSA - Ronald L. Rivest, Adi Shamir and Leonard M. Adleman
In 1977 after being inspired by a paper co-authored by Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman, Ronald L. Rivest, Adi Shamir and Leonard M. Adleman attempted to construct a working public key infrastructure. The result of their work was the RSA algorithm which was sufficient for confidentiality and digital signatures. It became the most widely used public key cryptography algorithm in the world. -
Pretty Good Privacy - Phil Zimmermann
After a threat by the Federal Bureau of Investigations to access communications of U.S. citizens, Phil Zimmermann made his first version of PGP public as freeware. Instead of rivaling competitors, PGP provided a high level of security for everyday citizens free of charge. PGP has become a standard world wide for privacy and authentication of data communications. -
Advanced Encryption Standard - NIST
Because of its small key size and insecurity DES was no longer a suitable standard and needed to be replaced.The National Institute of Science and Technology held a 3 year open call from 1997 to 2000 to find a suitable replacement. On October 2, 2000 NIST announced that it had selected the Rijindel algorithm as the basis for its new Advanced Encryption Standard to replace DES. -
Dual_EC_DRBG - NSA Backdoor
Dual_EC_DRBG is an algorithm for elliptic curve cryptography. It was discovered by a number of researchers with an intentional backdoor that could only be exploited by the NSA. The NSA had been publicly advocating for the wide spread use of the Dual_EC_DRBG algorithm. The backdoor would allow the NSA to decrypt SSL/TSL encryption. Classified documents leaked by Edward Snowden claim to implicate the NSA and raise public concern over its intentions to implement known back doors.
