Encryption has been in the news again - whether it's ransomware, law enforcement and iPhones, bitcoin, quantum computing, or potential new laws. Before we can "decrypt" all these issues, we need to talk a bit about what encryption is and isn't.
There's an old saying in Security... "if you think encryption is the answer, you might not have understood the question". I never liked the tone of that statement because it sounds kind of elitist, but it is basically true. And that's because encryption is very confusing.
Encrypting data is great because it means it can't read by unauthorized people. And that is the trick... how to let the right people in and keep the wrong people out. If my encrypted data is unreadable by anyone then that's called Ransomware!
Encrypting my data so only I can read it is pretty easy. It means that only I need the "key". Of course, I better not loose that key! Encrypting my data so I can share it with you is also pretty easy. We just need a "shared secret". If I need to share my data with a bunch of people then we get into something called "public key cryptography". Here's a good explanation of that.
Encryption is basically a solved problem. Because math. #math. There are many great algorithms with cool names like Elliptic Curve, RSA and Two-Fish.

