Chapter 10. Cryptography

If I had written this book ten years ago, cryptography would have been the topic of the first chapter. The terms network security and cryptography were considered to be synonymous. Today, we understand that cryptography is merely a useful tool, not a panacea.

What makes network security different from traditional computer security is that without cryptography, each machine in the network is essentially alone; there is no way for a machine to know with any confidence where any information came from unless it was obtained from a direct, physical connection to another machine. The attacker exploits this isolation. Cryptography provides “cement” that allows us to establish durable, trustworthy connections between machines ...

Get The dotCrime Manifesto now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.