Cryptography: Cryptography Basics (TryHackMe)

In this article, I will write a write-up for Cryptography Basics that covers the Importance of Cryptography, Plaintext to Ciphertext, Historical Ciphers, Types of Encryption and Basic Math in cryptography and symmetric encryption.

1. What is the standard required for handling credit card information? PCI DSS

2. What do you call the encrypted plaintext? ciphertext

3. What do you call the process that returns the plaintext? decryption

4. Knowing that XRPCTCRGNEI was encrypted using Caesar Cipher, what is the original plaintext? ICANENCRYPT

At first, I thought we had to decode into the PLAINTEXT manually like shifting the letters several times backwards using the alphabet A-Z with the number 26 concept. Thinking we’ll have to change from ZYXABCD… to ABCD…Z or the VWXYZABC… with no success

Eventually, I realized that the question has a hint that one can “Can use an online tool such as the ones available at https://cryptii.com/pipes/caesar-cipher and https://www.dcode.fr/caesar-cipher”.

Having understood the concept of shifting the positions of the specific letters in the word we’re trying to find its Plaintext a few positions backward till you get an English word. Using Cryptii.com by default it shifts by 7 steps backward but if you move 11 steps backward you arrive to the word ICANENCRYPT

5. Should you trust DES? (Yea/Nay) Nay

6. When was AES adopted as an encryption standard? 2001

7. What’s 1001 ⊕ 1010? 0011

   

8. What’s 118613842%9091? 356

   

9. What’s 60%12? 0

Thank you for reading my article. Please leave any questions or comments on improving my learning journey and the THM challenges.