After the Pandemic, cyber attacks increased.
skdar University Faculty of Engineering and Natural Sciences Computer Engineering Department Instructor Fatih Temiz found information and recommendations on the encryption system, which is still used.
According to Dr. Instructor Fatih Temiz, “Ancient Greek kryptos (hidden) and grapheia is the science of cryptography, which aims at secure communication between two people or parties and enables the information to be transformed into a form that cannot be comprehend by undesirable people.” The invention of writing was thought to be a kind of secret communication by some scientists.
One of the oldest examples of cryptography was used by the Roman Emperor Julius Caesar in BC, according to Dr. Instructor Fatih Temiz.
The Caesar cipher was used by Augustus Caesar to communicate with his troops. Each letter was replaced by the next three letters in the alphabet, which resulted in a meaningless message. The message “skdar” was converted into a meaningless text by people who weren’t familiar with this method. The people who knew the password were getting the message of “skdar” again by replacing the “Zunzgt” ciphertext with letters three before them. The encryption method in which letters are replaced by any letter in the alphabet is the same method. In order to crack the password in this method, there are an incredible number of different situations, such as 8, 841, 761, 993, 739, 701, 954, 543, 616, 000 in Turkish. It can be solved in a second.
These and similar methods, which are now primitive, were replaced by electromechanical devices such as the famous Enigma in the 20th century. It was invented by the Germans and had an important role in the Second World War. The ability to transform the same letter into different letters or different letters into the same letter depending on the position in which it is used was thought to be perfect. The settings were changed daily and there were more than 160 quintillion possible settings. Alan Turing, who is known today as the father of computer science and artificial intelligence, was part of a team that was working to crack the German cipher. The Bombe, which is believed to be one of the first computers, was developed to crack Enigma’s code. According to historians, this event caused the war to end two years earlier.
The spread of the internet and the development of computer technology have led to the use of cryptography in a wide range. Fatih said, “Today, we use cryptography when messaging with mobile phone applications, shopping on websites, using internet banking, and using smart home systems.” When signing a document with an electronic signature, we use cryptography.
Emphasizing that it’s mainly used for secure communication and communication, Fatih said, “In today’s information age, we are constantly transmitting a large amount of data to one place.” Cryptography is used to protect us. Personal privacy, home and vehicle security, and financial security are some of the things that Cryptography is used to protect. It’s possible to use cryptography for document signing purposes. Passwords for e-mail and social media accounts aren’t stored in databases when we set them. He said that they are converted and stored into meaningless expressions with special functions.
“Cyber attacks increased after the pandemic”
Most of the attacks on companies or institutions of this type target security vulnerabilities, according to Fatih. It is common for people to be directed to fake websites to try to get their passwords. He said the passwords of social media and e-mail accounts are frequently stolen and changed with this method.
Fatih said that we should be careful not to include information that is known or can be guessed by others when choosing our passwords.
Information such as our date of birth, the team we hire, license plate code is very risky for selecting a password. There are programs that will try multiple passwords that are common or may make sense to many. An important criterion for security is the length of the passwords. It is easier to crack short passwords. Many websites have requirements such as the length of passwords, uppercase, and special character requirements. Passwords that are meaningful to the individual only, contain 8 or more characters, and are long enough, consisting of both uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, or special characters are some of the most secure.
We need to make sure that the site we are entering our password on is original. Fatih said, “We should not click on links in messages or e-mails that do not come from a reliable recipient or we should be very careful when clicking.” Public wi-fi networks are inherently secure. He said no transactions with credentials or credit cards should be made when using such networks.
