Recent Security Breaches

Recent Security Breaches

By: Declan O’, Sophia C, Sharon F, Lexi L, Pearce B, Euan J, and Gus F

Hackers

As many of you should know, hackers are dangerous to the world of technology.
But what exactly is a hacker? A hacker is a person that illegally tries to gain access
to unauthorized information. With the advancement of technology, hackers are able
to hack into large breaches of data instead of just hacking people one by one. This
can be very harmful to the customers, stock market, and businesses. Nowadays, we
have security officers just to help lower the damage hackers can do and to keep us
and our information safe.

What can Hackers Do?

A list of  things that hackers can do are:

• Obtain and hijack information such as your Social Security number, names, addresses
• , birthdays, passwords, usernames, and more
• Sell your personal information for money
• Create counterfeit, or fake accounts using your information
• Use information for blackmailing
• Make purchases with your money
• Abuse and use your Social Security number
• Shut down websites
• Create “online traffic jams”

Why Do Hackers Do This?

Why do hackers want to cause so much disruption? Instead of looking at hacking
as a threat to the economy, some hackers think of it as more of a hobby and do it
for the enjoyment and for the adrenaline rush of being able to hack into a system.
Hackers also hack to steal information that could be important and crucial to
people. Additionally, they also hack to leak and spread information to undermine
rivaling businesses. One reason they are able to do this are by guessing easy and
simple passwords many people use, which leads us into our next topic.

How to Keep Your Password Safe

Keeping your password safe is very important. Don't use your same password for
many different websites. And don’t use passwords like “password” because people
can easily guess that and then hack you. Some bad passwords include birthdays,
dog’s names, simple, or often used passwords like “123456”. They can take
control over your money and possessions, and you can be in big trouble if they get
your password, so it is important to keep your password protected.

To make safe passwords you can include lowercase and uppercase letters. You can
also use numbers, and symbols like dollar signs, hashtags, and asterisks. Also, you
can make your password longer, but try to remember it!

Recent Security Breaches

There have been many recent security breaches that have impacted many people.
One example of a recent security breach is Target. In the winter of 2013, Target
suffered from a large data hack. The hackers could obtain much as $10,000. The
breach caused as many as 40 million credit and debit cards to be impacted, but that
number grew to 70 million.

Other companies like Yahoo and Equifax recently suffered from large data breach
attacks at similar numbers of costs and number of cards and people impacted.
Equifax is a banking company, and when it got hacked, even people that don’t use
Equifax still were  in danger of getting information leaked. Almost half the U.S.
was impacted by this. Yahoo had all 3 billion people that used it getting
information stolen this year. It was recorded as the biggest hack in history!
You should keep your password safe in order to protect yourself from hackers.

How to Stop Hackers

You can’t exactly stop hackers, but you can prevent them for using your
information. Ways you can monitor your accounts are by checking them daily.
You will be able to tell to see if things have been bought on your credit card that
you or your family did not buy. You also can see if things have changed a lot to see
if someone else had been on your account. You also can have different and random
passcodes that you will remember and the hackers will not.

There is No Flaw in the Code

No one can crack this code. Because of the great advancement of technology
we have today, no one can stop the hackers from hacking because we haven't
found a solution and a way to prevent people from hacking the code. But,
everyday people are making advancements and finding new ways to make codes
better. So, we can only prevent people from accessing information.

When do we Use Cryptography?

We use cryptography when we are trying to keep information safe and secure.
When people are trying to keep information safe,  they normally appoint a chief
information security officer or create different firewalls to keep people  from
viewing the information. People also use cryptography/encryption when making a
mobile phone call.

Conclusion

In conclusion, it is definitely safe to say that modern day hackers are dangerous.
It is impossibly hard to stop hackers, but they are still a threat to businesses and
people today. They can leak personal information, shut down websites,
and create fake IDs using your name. Cryptography and encryption is still
important today because you need to have uncrackable codes to stay safe and
away from hackers who could be a potential threat to you.

        Sources:

• Techopedia

• Hackers

• What can Hackers Do?

• Other things they can do

• Why do hackers hack?

• Another link about RSB

       -   Silicon Valleys Explanation

Wind Talkers

Wind Speakers

By: RJ, Isaac, Alex, Amelia, Evelyn, and Jackson

How it started      
  During World War II, the US and Japan were doing their share of fighting
each other. The Americans were losing badly because the Japanese were
cracking every code thrown at them as easy as pie. Then in February 1442,
retired US Marine corps Philip Johnston had an idea. He visited Camp
Elliot with his idea. He managed to persuade Lieutenant Colonel James E.
Jones to try using the Navajo people as code talkers. They recruited 4
bilingual Navajo natives. On February 28th, they had a demonstration
for marine staff officers. The Navajo code talkers communicated with
radios. Normally, the Japanese and the Germans  would intercept a radio
code and would crack the code if the sender used one, but with the new
code they could send the code without it being intercepted. At the time
the Americans were using a very complex code that was made using a
radio, but when the Navajos land started to get bombed some of them
joined the war and ended up becoming code talkers.

How it influenced cryptography

    The Navajo code had two parts. The first part was a 26 part phonetic
alphabet. They used Navajo names for 18 animals that stood for the
letter they started with. However, for other letters, they had to use other
words. These codes were ice for ‘i’, nut for ‘n’, quiver for ‘q’, ute for ‘u’,
 victor for ‘v’, cross for ‘x’, yucca for ‘y’, and zinc for ‘z’. The second

 part wasa 211 word english vocabulary with Navajo synonyms.

How did it get cracked?
Trick question. It never got cracked, they just released the code after
the war was over. The navajo code greatly affected WWII.If the code
was not made the US would have probably lost the battle of Iwo Jima.
That would mean the the US would have probably lost WWII because
the Japanese would have known what the US battle plan was. However,
if someone had eavesdropped on soldiers taking lessons on the code and
then used that knowledge to listen to the United States soldiers sending
messages then they could decipher the messages and crack the code easily.

Sources

http://www.historynet.com/world-war-ii-navajo-code-talkers.htm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LN2oKqa1o04

Amelia D.
Evelyn B.
Alex T.
Isaac S.
RJ P.
Jackson K.

Engima

Enigma

Historical Background

At the end of World War I, the Allies were celebrating their victory over the Nazis.

But years later the Germans had stopped backing down and World War II had started.

This required new codes to be created and cryptographers to create and crack them.

But this time the Germans had a secret weapon, the Enigma code.

Who Invented It?

In the year of 1918, Arthur Scherbius invented the Enigma code. This was a machine that could fully code a message so hard that it would take years to figure out. This was initially used to make business deals private and secure. But that was a few years before WWII started. When the German military found out about the machine it became their most valued asset. This gave the Nazis several wins and caused the Allies to panic. Even when the Allies put their best cryptographers to work, none could solve it. The Enigma was an electromechanical machine that relied on a series of rotating wheels to scramble messages into a chaotic ciphertext. There were over 100,000,000 possible combinations. When you press a letter it would light up the other letter it encrypted it to. So for example, if you pressed E it could light up to A but if you press E again it could light up P. So it wouldn’t give the same letter. It was possible to even change which path each number took. The Germans also changed the order of the wires and wheels every day which made even harder to crack.

Who Cracked the Code?

During WWII, the Allies, though specifically the British, were finding these Enigma machines in sunken U-boats along the Atlantic Ocean. They knew that this was the machine that was sending the codes to the shipmen, and that they needed to figure them out. So Alan Turing and his friends invented the “Bomb” to stimulate all the millions of calculations that the Enigma could create. During the middle of WWII, the British were intercepting the Enigma-Morse Coded messages from German headquarters to the ships, which always started with “wind speeds.” The British noticed this, intercepting more and more every day, figured out that it would always be the wind speeds first so that they could start off their calculations with that first part. In 1943-45, the British and US had many “Bomb” machines on the Atlantic side, the Germans not even knowing that they were figuring out their codes. By 1945, the “Bomb” machines figured out the German Enigma codes, and the German encrypted code time was finished.  

Flaws

The Enigma machine had a couple mechanical and personal flaws. The first was that the people who sent the messages from station to boats started with “wind speeds” every day so it was a starting point for the British. Another was that the Enigma machine couldn’t make a letter itself like making “e” to “e”. The third was that the people who operated the Enigma machines sometimes forgot to rotate the gears, making the number of combinations more and more limited.

Resources:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/topics/enigma  

http://www.cryptomuseum.com/crypto/enigma/hist.htm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hb44bGY2KdU

https://www.quora.com/Why-is-the-Enigma-machine-important

 By;

Arjun V

Jack P

Keegan S

Josh S

Sofia B

Battle of Midway

The Battle of Midway

The battle of Midway started on June 4th of 1942, between the Americans and the Japanese. It was six months after the attack of Pearl Harbor, and the Americans were still weak from the blow. Because of that, they had less ships than the Japanese, plus a lot less aircraft carriers. On Midway Island, the Japanese were set for the Americans to come after them.

The US Navy was mostly demolished from Japan’s attack on the U.S. at Pearl Harbor. The attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprising military strike by the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service, against the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii Territory, on the morning of December 7, 1941.  

A major person the battle of Midway was Isoroku Yamamoto. He was a Japanese Commander-in-Chief in the Pacific War. He led Japan in the attack but was shot down and died when the US cracked the code and tracked his plane.

Cryptography was a huge influence in this battle. Captain Joseph J. Rochefort led the base HYPO that successfully cracked the code from Japan! It said that they would strike the U.S. carrier ships in late May to early June.

Though they had planned the big attack, there were many flaws about the cryptography used from Japan. First, the Japanese Navy did not send their codes or orders safely. They sent them very freely when then the Americans could easily break their code. They had confidence in themselves that they could break the code because they owned a Japanese Code Book. This book made it easier to decode the secret messages.  There was one problem about the book though, there were more than 90,000 phrases in the book and had to be looked over carefully. Also, Japan’s technique was weak and easily broken.

As a result of the battle, the US cracked the code and had had won the battle. They had lost four carriers, while the U.S only lost one in the fight. These results would have been different if the U.S. hadn’t cracked Japan’s code.

Sources: https://www.nsa.gov/about/cryptologic-heritage/historical-figures-publications/publications/wwii/battle-midway.shtml https://www.nsa.gov/about/cryptologic-heritage/historical-figures-publications/publications/wwii/battle-midway.shtml https://www.navalhistory.org/2013/06/04/navy-cryptology-and-the-battle-of-midway-our-finest-hour https://www.google.com/?safe=active&ssui=on

By: Gavin J, Ben P, Michael T, Elizabeth Z, Sri M, Charlotte M

Zimmermann Telegram

Zimmerman Telegram

History:

In 1848, Mexico lost half of their land to the United States.
Mexico was very angry and sought revenge. Germany
didn’t want the United States to keep sending troops to
attack them, so they sent a telegram, created by
Arthur Zimmerman, to Mexico asking them if they wanted
to join them in attacking the United States. In return,
Germany said that they would help get Mexico’s land
recover from the United States. Germany wanted to keep
the United States distracted so they wouldn’t join the war
in Europe.

Influence of Cryptography and Flaw in
the Code:

The catch was, Arthur Zimmermann’s telegram was in
code. It was a jumble of numbers. When the telegram
was sent, it was intercepted by the British. The British
deciphered the telegram, revealing Germany’s plan.
The British told the United States, pulling them into the
war against Germany. Germany’s plan to distract the
United States from joining the war in Europe backfired,
starting a new conflict between the United States and
Germany. Later in the war, the Germans would lose to the
United States after a deadly war.

Sources:

Great Video

Helpful Website

Another Great Site



By:
Jonathan R.
Nick R.
Miles T.
Eshaan G.
Emma E.
Nicole S.

Public Key Exchanges

The videos below are for review only.  Watch them for help when developing protocols for the final challenge.  You can review Modular Arithmetic Here.

Summary:
1. What is the Diffie Hellman Exhange?
2. Why is this a good method?
3. Why is this called a public key exchange?

Diffie Hellman

RSA Exchange

Division Algorithm and Modular Arithmetic

Watch this video as many times as you need. WSQ in your notebooks.  

W = Work out any problems assigned during the video in your notes.

S = Summarize the video.  This can be done using bullets.  List at least 3 things you learned from this video or important things to remember about this lesson.

Q = Question you have or a question someone else might have about the information in the video. This can also be a question that sparks discussion or causes other to think about the topic more deeply.

Summary Questions:

1. How do you know there is a remainder when completing long division?
2. How would you describe modular arithmetic over the phone to a friend?
3. What operation does modular arithmetic use?
4. How does modular arithmetic affect the order of operations?

Ciphers

The earliest evidence we have of the use of cryptography dates back to around 1900 BC in a tomb in Egypt.  While many tombs had hieroglyphics written on the walls, this particular tomb used very unusual symbols in the place of those that are well known.  It is believed that the author was not trying to hide the message, rather project high status.  

Classic works from early civilizations describe espionage service,s particularly in India, where spies were given encrypted assignments.

It is presumed that the Egyptians as early as 1900 BC used cryptography in hieroglyphic writings to hide the meaning of a message.  The Greeks used a methods which involved a hexagonal prism shaped stick, called a scytale, wrapped in tape to write a message that, when unwound, had no meaning.  The recipient of the message would decrypt the message by re-wrapping the message around an identical scytale to read the message.  

Greek Scytale used to encrypt and decrypt messages.

Around 100 BC, Julius Caesar used encrypted messages to army generals during war times, giving us the most famous,  and uniquely named, substitution cipher, the Caesar Cipher.

A cipher is a secret way of sending a message by disguising the characters of your message with a code.

Substitution ciphers encrypt secret messages by switching one character for another.  For example, if a cipher was shifted by 4, the letter "A" would become "E" since it is 4 characters past "A" in the alphabet.  See the examples below:

The cipher above has been shifted by 2.  So, If you wanted to say "HELLO", you would write "JGNNQ"

This cipher split the alphabet so that each letter corresponds to another letter in the alphabet.

There are many more ways to create the key for a substitution cipher.

Decryption of a substitution cipher requires both the sending and receiving party to have a copy of the key.  Here in lies the problem.  Most keys throughout history have been compromised as a result of stolen keys.  In order to decrypt the message, you need to be told or given a copy of the key.  This leaves a lot of space for eaves droppers to overhear the key or physical copies left along for only a few moments can be taken by a thief.

Many people, have been able to crack the code by studying the encrypted message and looking for repeated characters.  Often the most common symbols substitute a space between words or most frequently used letters (think Wheel of Fortune's RSTLNE).  The ability to keep or crack codes have greatly altered the outcomes of wars, thus changing the course of history.

Explore a variety of ciphers we have today.

Try cracking theses Caesar Ciphers by examining repeated symbols. This applet only works when opened in Modzilla FireFox.  Warning:  Your computer must have Java installed.

Looking for something more challenging?  Check out this applet on Substitution Ciphers.  Can you crack these codes?  This applet only works when opened in Modzilla FireFox.  Warning:  Your computer must have Java installed.

Sources:                                                                            https://securityblog.redhat.com/2013/08/14/a-brief-history-of-cryptography/  http://www.studentpulse.com/articles/41/a-brief-history-of-cryptography