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 estabpshment of a large toolkit containing different techniques in security apppcations.

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 apppcations integrating security in them.

To integrate security in your apppcations rather than depending on the comppcated security algorithms you can easily call the respective API’s provided in JCA for required services.