A session of Phi Cluster organised by Mrs. Himani Jain was conducted on the 15th of March by Mr. Jyotesh Singh (a distinguished ex Columban, pursuing P.H.D at Princeton University), who discussed various aspects of Cryptography with the students in significant detail.
We began with an introduction to the field of Cryptography and were introduced to various new concepts such as Encryption, Decryption and Keys. After a lengthy discussion on the topic of functions required in this field, various traditional Cryptographic methods were discussed such as the Caesar Cipher, Alphabet Substitution and VigenéreCipher, the drawbacks of such systems and their presence in popular culture was also discussed after which we moved on to more modern methods such as the RSA encryption.
A long and thorough explanation was given about the working of the RSA Algorithm and the reasons for its security and reliability were made evident when the actual process had been fully understood. Various topics such as modular arithmetic were extensively discussed for they were crucial in the working of modern encryption algorithms.
Later, we set our eyes towards the future of Cryptography, about how modern encryption systems are likely to fail with the advancement in technology and how we need to discover new methods to encrypt information. Potential Candidates for future systems were also briefly discussed such as Chaos Theory and their impracticalities.
In the end, questions were asked by the students which they had and the session was concluded. The students felt that it was a very nice and informative session and are looking to forward to their next session. This experience opened their eyes further to the world of mathematics and widened their horizons.
