How Ancient Egyptians and Romans Influenced Modern Day Cryptography
Intro
Since the beginning of time, humans have always attempted to construct things to be inconceivable or obfuscated. The ancient Egyptians were case in point by establishing the hieroglyphic alphabet which represented sounds and when properly combined can form phrases and ideas. Fast forward some centuries later, Julius Caesar, who was on track to becoming leader of the most powerful empire, was seen using some of the first signs of encryption to conceal messages in a more defined and engineered approach.
The whole purpose of this was to ensure spies and criminals were unable to read a message when in transit; keep that in mind. Data and personal privacy is what seems to be a constantly trending topic nowadays, imagine how critical securing data was back then when a whole empire was dependent on its plain sailing delivery at times. There are many parallels between the mindset and intentions of our ancient ancestors when developing alphabets and cryptographic algorithms to modern day cryptography. It is important sometimes to visit our roots when taking in cryptographic principles; not just recently to the enigma, but dating back to when some of the first ideas of translating human representation of language into an obscure form of scribe.
Ancient Egyptian and Roman Ciphering Practices
When ancient Egyptians developed hieroglyphs, it initially wasn’t for the purpose of cryptography. Cryptography is essentially the process of converting ordinary writing into unintelligible text. The ancient Egyptians laid the foundation more than anything by forming the idea of converting one form of expression into another. This indubitably opened up a whole path for development of not just the ability to put thoughts and speech into writing, but also inspired the methodology behind concealing messages. Julius Caesar and the Romans took this fundamental logic to the next step but rather than converting letters into symbols, they converted letters into letters. Here is what I mean by that.
The Caesar Cipher is a shift cipher which essentially shifts the alphabet a certain number of slots forward or backward depending on how Caesar felt that day. The purpose of this is to initially make a message unintelligible so if it were intercepted while en route to its destination, the threat would not be able to figure it out unless they have the key(the key being the number of slots the alphabet was shifted). To put this into motion, a basic example of this would be if I wanted to encrypt the message “Hello World” and I decided the key would be to shift the alphabet left by three characters as shown below, the message would now appear as “EBIIL TLOIA”. It seems nearly impossible to an outsider at first sight to decrypt this because without knowing the algorithm or the key, it probably is unless brute forced. Brute Forcing is the practice of trying every possible combination of a key until a message there is a desirable output. This seems manageable with a simple cipher such as this one, but would never work with a complex algorithm such as the AES encryption algorithm.
This establishes the whole fundamental idea behind cryptography and allows humanity to level up in their ability to create and engineer the science of what we call encryption today. Throughout history, we’ve seen other cryptographic algorithms throughout different kingdoms and empires to serve different purposes each with their own advantages; some the latter. Greece invented the Scytale at around roughly 650 BCE, the Italians entered the chat roughly 2,000 years later with the Alberti which inspired the Vigenere cipher about 100 years later. Our Founding Father, Thomas Jefferson, invented the Jefferson Wheel Cipher a few hundred years later. More recently, the Zimmerman telegram was developed during World War 1 and the Enigma during World War 2. Cryptographers studied and analyzed all of these techniques from the beginning of time to create the most advanced and secure military grade encryption algorithms which are used today.
Modern Cryptography/The Bigger Picture
Like I mentioned before, the whole point of cryptography is to transform ordinary messages into an unintelligible version. This has expanded into encrypting data, metadata, and metadata’s metadata. Almost anything traversing through the internet or even just sitting on your device will likely be encrypted with some sort of algorithm depending on the situation. But why even do this when we can just better secure the process used to communicate data? Defense in Depth is why. Hackers are smart and very comfortable with technology. Or at least we should always assume so to prepare for any situation. That being said, data in transit and even data at rest can be captured and intercepted. Encryption is the last line of defense in securing against this so that if hackers are somehow able to intercept packets, it will be close to impossible for them to decrypt it. Encryption and Cryptography is always the last line of defense when it comes to securing data.
Let’s look at this from a non-technical perspective. During the late 100’s BCE, let’s say Julius Caesar wanted to deliver a message to someone in Africa. He is going to put multiple security measures in place to ensure that this message is delivered quickly, efficiently, and all in one piece while maintaining its integrity and confidentiality. So maybe he is going to lock the scroll, so it is hard to break open if left behind for a few seconds by the messenger. Maybe he will also order the messenger to take a different route which less thieves and spies are known to linger around. Additionally, maybe he could decide to arm this messenger with some weapons in case of a situation where he is attacked by thieves or spies. Finally, Caesar can equip this message with his famous Caesar Cipher so if the message were to be stolen, a mere amateur will not be able to decipher it.
Although measures like this are ineffective and not applicable with our computers, the same idea applies. There are multiple security measures in place with encryption techniques being the last line of defense. The way Julius Caesar and the Ancient Egyptians formed techniques and created measures to make messages unreadable is also continued today with our privacy and data. Not only do we want what we send and receive to be at the highest level confidentiality for our personal privacy, but more critically, this data can be leveraged by threat actors to further craft more sophisticated attacks which can do more harm to our reputation, financials, and time.
Encryption is not just a piece of a puzzle which we call cyber security, but rather a critical piece to something more like a Jenga tower. You take it out of the picture, maybe your security posture will be okay, maybe it won’t. However, one more piece of the tower lost, and you are in a bad situation. Cyber Security is like a spartan phalanx , losing pieces in the defense will not necessarily crumble everything, but all it takes is a threat lurking waiting for you to just let down your guard; and that is a risk that cannot be taken.
