Among the various technological advances of the second world war, the first modern day digital and programmable computer was born at Bletchley Park. The first application of this type of computer consisted of decrypting scrambled messages. The art of scrambling messages is known as cryptography. Today cryptography is widely used for e-commerce, corporate communication and even personal use. Modern cryptography relies on hard mathematical problems such as factorization to ensure its security. Very large numbers are used making it infeasible to break even with many powerful computers.

Updates:
03/27/2006 Blowfish AES Block Ciphers DES
Public Key Cryptography Hard Drive Encryption