100-1 A.D.- Notable Roman ciphers such as the
Caesar cipher.
1–1799 A.D.
801–873 A.D. –
Cryptanalysis and
frequency analysis leading to techniques for breaking monoalphabetic substitution ciphers are developed in A Manuscript on Deciphering Cryptographic Messages by the
Muslim mathematician,
Al-Kindi (Alkindus), who may have been inspired by textual analysis of the
Qur'an. He also covers methods of
encipherments, cryptanalysis of certain encipherments, and
statistical analysis of letters and letter combinations in
Arabic.
1355-1418 –
Ahmad al-Qalqashandi writes Subh al-a 'sha, a 14-volume encyclopedia including a section on cryptology, attributed to
Ibn al-Durayhim (1312–1361). The list of
ciphers in this work include both
substitution and
transposition, and for the first time, a cipher with multiple substitutions for each
plaintext letter. It also included an exposition on and worked example of cryptanalysis, including the use of tables of
letter frequencies and sets of letters which cannot occur together in one word.
1450 – The Chinese develop wooden block
movable type printing.
1450–1520 – The
Voynich manuscript, an example of a possibly encoded illustrated book, is written.
c. 1854 –
Babbage's method for breaking polyalphabetic ciphers (pub 1863 by
Kasiski)
1855 – For the English side in
Crimean War,
Charles Babbage broke Vigenère's autokey cipher (the 'unbreakable cipher' of the time) as well as the much weaker cipher that is called
Vigenère cipher today. Due to secrecy it was also discovered and attributed somewhat later to the Prussian Friedrich Kasiski.
June 1942 –
Battle of Midway where U.S. partial break into Dec 41 edition of
JN-25 leads to turning-point victory over Japan
April 1943 –
Admiral Yamamoto, architect of Pearl Harbor attack, is assassinated by U.S. forces who know his itinerary from decoded messages
April 1943 –
Max Newman, Wynn-Williams, and their team (including
Alan Turing) at the secret Government Code and Cypher School ('Station X'),
Bletchley Park, Bletchley, England, complete the "Heath Robinson". This is a specialized machine for cipher-breaking, not a general-purpose calculator or computer.
December 1943 – The
Colossus computer was built, by
Thomas Flowers at The Post Office Research Laboratories in
London, to crack the German
Lorenz cipher (SZ42). Colossus was used at Bletchley Park during World War II – as a successor to April's 'Robinson's. Although 10 were eventually built, unfortunately they were destroyed immediately after they had finished their work – it was so advanced that there was to be no possibility of its design falling into the wrong hands.
1944 – Patent application filed on
SIGABA code machine used by U.S. in World War II. Kept secret, it finally issues in 2001
1946 – The
Venona project's first break into Soviet espionage traffic from the early 1940s
1967 –
David Kahn's The Codebreakers is published.
1968 –
John Anthony Walker walks into the
Soviet Union's embassy in Washington and sells information on
KL-7 cipher machine. The Walker spy ring operates until 1985.
1969 – The first hosts of
ARPANET, Internet's ancestor, are connected.
1970 – Using
quantum states to encode information is first proposed:
Stephen Wiesner invents
conjugate coding and applies it to design “money physically impossible to counterfeit” (still technologically unfeasible today).
1978 –
Robert McEliece invents the
McEliece cryptosystem, the first asymmetric encryption algorithm to use randomization in the encryption process.
1981 –
Richard Feynman proposed
quantum computers. The main application he had in mind was the simulation of quantum systems, but he also mentioned the possibility of solving other problems.
1985 – Walker spy ring uncovered. Remaining KL-7's withdrawn from service.
1986 – After an increasing number of break-ins to government and corporate computers, United States Congress passes the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, which makes it a crime to break into computer systems. The law, however, does not cover juveniles.
1994 –
Peter Shor devises an algorithm which lets quantum computers determine the
factorization of large integers quickly. This is the first interesting problem for which quantum computers promise a significant speed-up, and it therefore generates a lot of interest in quantum computers.
1994 – Russian crackers siphon $10 million from
Citibank and transfer the money to bank accounts around the world.
Vladimir Levin, the 30-year-old ringleader, uses his work laptop after hours to transfer the funds to accounts in Finland and Israel. Levin stands trial in the United States and is sentenced to three years in prison. Authorities recover all but $400,000 of the stolen money.
1994 – Formerly proprietary, but un-patented,
RC4 cipher algorithm is published on the Internet.
July 1997 –
OpenPGP specification (RFC 2440) released
1997 –
Ciphersaber, an encryption system based on RC4 that is simple enough to be reconstructed from memory, is published on
Usenet.
October 1998 –
Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) becomes law in U.S., criminalizing production and dissemination of technology that can circumvent technical measures taken to protect copyright.
October 1999 –
DeCSS, a computer program capable of decrypting content on a
DVD, is published on the Internet.
2000 and beyond
January 14, 2000 – U.S. Government announce restrictions on
export of cryptography are relaxed (although not removed). This allows many US companies to stop the long running process of having to create US and international copies of their software.
March 2000 –
President of the United StatesBill Clinton says he doesn't use e-mail to communicate with his daughter, Chelsea Clinton, at college because he doesn't think the medium is secure.
September 6, 2000 –
RSA Security Inc. released their RSA algorithm into the public domain, a few days in advance of their U.S. patent 4,405,829 expiring. Following the relaxation of the U.S. government export restrictions, this removed one of the last barriers to the worldwide distribution of much software based on cryptographic systems
2005 – Agents from the U.S.
FBI demonstrate their ability to crack
WEP using publicly available tools
May 1, 2007 – Users swamp
Digg.com with copies of a 128-bit
key to the
AACS system used to protect
HD DVD and
Blu-ray video discs. The
user revolt was a response to Digg's decision, subsequently reversed, to remove the keys, per demands from the
motion picture industry that cited the U.S.
DMCA anti-circumvention provisions.[1]
100-1 A.D.- Notable Roman ciphers such as the
Caesar cipher.
1–1799 A.D.
801–873 A.D. –
Cryptanalysis and
frequency analysis leading to techniques for breaking monoalphabetic substitution ciphers are developed in A Manuscript on Deciphering Cryptographic Messages by the
Muslim mathematician,
Al-Kindi (Alkindus), who may have been inspired by textual analysis of the
Qur'an. He also covers methods of
encipherments, cryptanalysis of certain encipherments, and
statistical analysis of letters and letter combinations in
Arabic.
1355-1418 –
Ahmad al-Qalqashandi writes Subh al-a 'sha, a 14-volume encyclopedia including a section on cryptology, attributed to
Ibn al-Durayhim (1312–1361). The list of
ciphers in this work include both
substitution and
transposition, and for the first time, a cipher with multiple substitutions for each
plaintext letter. It also included an exposition on and worked example of cryptanalysis, including the use of tables of
letter frequencies and sets of letters which cannot occur together in one word.
1450 – The Chinese develop wooden block
movable type printing.
1450–1520 – The
Voynich manuscript, an example of a possibly encoded illustrated book, is written.
c. 1854 –
Babbage's method for breaking polyalphabetic ciphers (pub 1863 by
Kasiski)
1855 – For the English side in
Crimean War,
Charles Babbage broke Vigenère's autokey cipher (the 'unbreakable cipher' of the time) as well as the much weaker cipher that is called
Vigenère cipher today. Due to secrecy it was also discovered and attributed somewhat later to the Prussian Friedrich Kasiski.
June 1942 –
Battle of Midway where U.S. partial break into Dec 41 edition of
JN-25 leads to turning-point victory over Japan
April 1943 –
Admiral Yamamoto, architect of Pearl Harbor attack, is assassinated by U.S. forces who know his itinerary from decoded messages
April 1943 –
Max Newman, Wynn-Williams, and their team (including
Alan Turing) at the secret Government Code and Cypher School ('Station X'),
Bletchley Park, Bletchley, England, complete the "Heath Robinson". This is a specialized machine for cipher-breaking, not a general-purpose calculator or computer.
December 1943 – The
Colossus computer was built, by
Thomas Flowers at The Post Office Research Laboratories in
London, to crack the German
Lorenz cipher (SZ42). Colossus was used at Bletchley Park during World War II – as a successor to April's 'Robinson's. Although 10 were eventually built, unfortunately they were destroyed immediately after they had finished their work – it was so advanced that there was to be no possibility of its design falling into the wrong hands.
1944 – Patent application filed on
SIGABA code machine used by U.S. in World War II. Kept secret, it finally issues in 2001
1946 – The
Venona project's first break into Soviet espionage traffic from the early 1940s
1967 –
David Kahn's The Codebreakers is published.
1968 –
John Anthony Walker walks into the
Soviet Union's embassy in Washington and sells information on
KL-7 cipher machine. The Walker spy ring operates until 1985.
1969 – The first hosts of
ARPANET, Internet's ancestor, are connected.
1970 – Using
quantum states to encode information is first proposed:
Stephen Wiesner invents
conjugate coding and applies it to design “money physically impossible to counterfeit” (still technologically unfeasible today).
1978 –
Robert McEliece invents the
McEliece cryptosystem, the first asymmetric encryption algorithm to use randomization in the encryption process.
1981 –
Richard Feynman proposed
quantum computers. The main application he had in mind was the simulation of quantum systems, but he also mentioned the possibility of solving other problems.
1985 – Walker spy ring uncovered. Remaining KL-7's withdrawn from service.
1986 – After an increasing number of break-ins to government and corporate computers, United States Congress passes the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, which makes it a crime to break into computer systems. The law, however, does not cover juveniles.
1994 –
Peter Shor devises an algorithm which lets quantum computers determine the
factorization of large integers quickly. This is the first interesting problem for which quantum computers promise a significant speed-up, and it therefore generates a lot of interest in quantum computers.
1994 – Russian crackers siphon $10 million from
Citibank and transfer the money to bank accounts around the world.
Vladimir Levin, the 30-year-old ringleader, uses his work laptop after hours to transfer the funds to accounts in Finland and Israel. Levin stands trial in the United States and is sentenced to three years in prison. Authorities recover all but $400,000 of the stolen money.
1994 – Formerly proprietary, but un-patented,
RC4 cipher algorithm is published on the Internet.
July 1997 –
OpenPGP specification (RFC 2440) released
1997 –
Ciphersaber, an encryption system based on RC4 that is simple enough to be reconstructed from memory, is published on
Usenet.
October 1998 –
Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) becomes law in U.S., criminalizing production and dissemination of technology that can circumvent technical measures taken to protect copyright.
October 1999 –
DeCSS, a computer program capable of decrypting content on a
DVD, is published on the Internet.
2000 and beyond
January 14, 2000 – U.S. Government announce restrictions on
export of cryptography are relaxed (although not removed). This allows many US companies to stop the long running process of having to create US and international copies of their software.
March 2000 –
President of the United StatesBill Clinton says he doesn't use e-mail to communicate with his daughter, Chelsea Clinton, at college because he doesn't think the medium is secure.
September 6, 2000 –
RSA Security Inc. released their RSA algorithm into the public domain, a few days in advance of their U.S. patent 4,405,829 expiring. Following the relaxation of the U.S. government export restrictions, this removed one of the last barriers to the worldwide distribution of much software based on cryptographic systems
2005 – Agents from the U.S.
FBI demonstrate their ability to crack
WEP using publicly available tools
May 1, 2007 – Users swamp
Digg.com with copies of a 128-bit
key to the
AACS system used to protect
HD DVD and
Blu-ray video discs. The
user revolt was a response to Digg's decision, subsequently reversed, to remove the keys, per demands from the
motion picture industry that cited the U.S.
DMCA anti-circumvention provisions.[1]