Java Cryptography - Introduction
Cryptography is the art and science of making a cryptosystem that is capable of providing information security.
Cryptography deals with the actual securing of digital data. It refers to the design of mechanisms based on mathematical algorithms that provide fundamental information security services. You can think of cryptography as the establishment of a large toolkit containing different techniques in security applications.
What is Cryptanalysis?
The art and science of breaking the cipher text is known as cryptanalysis.
Cryptanalysis is the sister branch of cryptography and they both co-exist. The cryptographic process results in the cipher text for transmission or storage. It involves the study of cryptographic mechanism with the intention to break them. Cryptanalysis is also used during the design of the new cryptographic techniques to test their security strengths.
Cryptography Primitives
Cryptography primitives are nothing but the tools and techniques in Cryptography that can be selectively used to provide a set of desired security services −
- Encryption
- Hash functions
- Message Authentication codes (MAC)
- Digital Signatures
Cryptography in Java
The Java Cryptography Architecture (JCA) is a set of API’s to implement concepts of modern cryptography such as digital signatures, message digests, certificates, encryption, key generation and management, and secure random number generation etc.
Using JCA developers can build their applications integrating security in them.
To integrate security in your applications rather than depending on the complicated security algorithms you can easily call the respective API’s provided in JCA for required services.
