- In this lesson 4.5,
we're gonna focus in on emerging cryptography.
Now, modern cryptography,
aided by all kinds of advanced technology,
really does continue to mature and to strengthen.
Emerging cryptographic applications and trends
include blockchain, homomorphic encryption,
quantum encryption, and post quantum cryptography.
Now, quantum encryption and post quantum,
really, are way above my pay grade.
So blockchain
in and of itself isn't a cryptographic process,
but it depends on cryptography.
Right, it is a distributed, decentralized public ledger,
and the blocks are linked using cryptography.
So each block contains a cryptographic hash
of the previous block, a timestamp, and transaction data.
Digital signatures are used in blockchain for authenticity.
And public key, asymmetric encryption, right,
with two keys, private and public,
serves as a basis for blockchain wallets and transactions.
Homomorphic encryption allows
for encrypted data to be processed.
When we talked about encryption earlier,
we talked about encryption for data that was at rest
or data in transmission,
but not data that was in use or in processed.
Homomorphic encryption solves that problem for us.
Now,
homomorphic encryption uses complex mathematical operations
to allow a variety of computations,
also known as operations, on the encrypted data.
Now, there are three types of homomorphic encryption
out there right now.
There's PHE, that's partially homomorphic encryption,
where one operation would be performed
an unlimited number of times on the ciphertext.
There is somewhat homomorphic encryption, or SHE, S-H-E,
and that supports limited operations
up to a certain complexity.
But those operations can only be performed
a set number of times.
And then we have fully homomorphic encryption,
which is really still in development,
which the encrypted data in its full form would be able
to be processed.
So really an interesting developments here,
because that means that we could have
that level of confidentiality on data,
even when it is being processed.
The quantum cryptography, also called quantum encryption,
applies principles of quantum mechanics to encrypt messages.
The quantum computers are machines
that exploit quantum mechanical phenomena
to solve these mathematical problems
that are difficult and intractable, really,
for conventional computers.
And it takes advantages of quantum's multiple states,
coupled with its no change theory,
which means it cannot be unknowingly interrupted.
Now, performing quantum cryptography
really requires immense computing power,
and if you can't wrap your head around it,
I'm with you on this one, right?
I don't understand a lot about quantum mechanics at all,
but I understand that this is an emerging trend,
and this is what we're going to see in the future.
Now, the goal of post quantum cryptography
is to develop cryptographic systems that secure
against both quantum and classical computers,
and can interoperate with existing communication protocols
and networks.
Now, if large scale quantum computers are ever built, right,
the wisdom is, right, they'll be able to break
many of the public key crypto systems
that are currently in use.
And that would be really bad, right?
That would seriously compromise the confidentiality
and the integrity of digital communications
on the internet and elsewhere.
So if you wanna read more about quantum cryptography
and post quantum cryptography,
there is a really good NIST publication.
You can see the link there.
You can go out at csrc.nist.gov.
It's in their projects
post quantum cryptography publication.
So if you find this topic of interest, go ahead and read it.
You won't need to know
anything that's in there for the exam,
but it really is pretty fascinating stuff.
All right,
that brings us to our next three second challenge.
You ready?
Five questions, three seconds each.
Let's see how well you do.
A distributed decentralized public ledger
that depends upon cryptography.
That's my little editorial for you.
One, two, three, what do you got?
That's blockchain, good work.
Number two, method of encryption that allows data
to remain encrypted while it's being processed.
Remember, I told you there are three different versions
out there that are being worked on.
One, two, three, that's gonna be homomorphic encryption.
Question three, encryption process that evokes
the no change theory.
One, two, three.
It's gonna be quantum encryption.
Number four, the goal is to develop cryptographic systems
that are secure against both quantum
and classical computers.
One, two, three.
That is post quantum cryptography.
And lastly, number five, blockchain uses this technique
to prove authenticity.
One, two, three.
Digital signatures.
All right, how'd you do on that?
Mm, it's a little bit of a tough subject.
It's not one that we used to using every day,
but it is definitely an exam objective.
So let's do a security in action case study
about emerging technology.
As a data owner, you wanna send data
up to the cloud for processing,
but you don't trust the service provider with your data.
You're exploring an emerging technology
that would allow you to send encrypted data
to the service provider.
The service provider would perform the relevant computations
on the data without ever decrypting it,
and then send the encrypted results back to you.
You would be the only one who could decrypt the results,
since you alone have the secret key.
What cryptographic processes
are necessary to meet these objectives?
And this is an emerging technology, right?
One that we're really looking for in the future.
What would be the process?
Go ahead and put me on pause,
write down some notes, and come on back.
Well, homomorphic encryption is what we would be using.
In its simplest terms,
homomorphic encryption allows computations
to be performed on encrypted data,
including in the cloud environment.
And produce an encrypted result,
which could then be decrypted,
with the end result being the same as if you did
the math yourself on the unencrypted data.
Now, what's the current state of this?
Standards are in development, interoperable APIs,
application programming interfaces are in development,
and there's really very limited use.
But a good example is Microsoft's Election Guard system,
which does enable mathematical procedures like counting
to be done with encrypted data.
So keep your eye out on this,
because this is really an emerging trend,
as well as all of the other trends and technologies
that we've just talked about in this lesson.
And you can see them all right here.
Here is your word cloud.
Not too many terms here,
but make sure that you can recognize all of these terms
before you move on to our next lesson,
which is about stenography.