AY Honor Cryptography

Cryptography

Skill Level

1

Year

2025

Version

14.06.2025

Approval authority

North American Division

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Overview

Cryptography is the practice of securing communication and information through the use of codes to ensure confidentiality, integrity, and authentication. It involves techniques for converting plaintext (readable data) into ciphertext (unreadable data) using cryptographic algorithms, making it hard for unauthorized parties to decode the information. Learn more in this honor about the different ways to encode messages and decipher someone else's message.

The Challenging Part

The most challenging requirement of this honor is probably this:

5. Classical cryptology is the study of codes and ciphers used in the past. Discover how the following cryptographic forms were encoded in antiquity, and try to duplicate their processes to record a message:

a. Egyptian hieroglyphs, 1900 BC

b. Hebrew Atbash cipher, 500 BC

c. Julius Caesar's substitution cipher, 100 BC