History of Cryptography in Syllabus on Information Security Training Sergey Zapechnikov, Alexander Tolstoy, Sergey Nagibin
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History of Cryptography in Syllabus on Information Security Training Sergey Zapechnikov, Alexander Tolstoy, Sergey Nagibin To cite this version: Sergey Zapechnikov, Alexander Tolstoy, Sergey Nagibin. History of Cryptography in Syllabus on In- formation Security Training. 9th IFIP World Conference on Information Security Education (WISE), May 2015, Hamburg, Germany. pp.146-157, 10.1007/978-3-319-18500-2_13. hal-01334298 HAL Id: hal-01334298 https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01334298 Submitted on 20 Jun 2016 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution| 4.0 International License History of Cryptography in Syllabus on Information Security Training Zapechnikov Sergey, Tolstoy Alexander and Nagibin Sergey The National Research Nuclear University MEPhI (Moscow Engineering Physics Institute), 31 Kashirskoye shosse, Moscow, Russia {SVZapechnikov, AITolstoj}@mephi.ru Abstract. This paper discusses the peculiarities and problems of teaching the historical aspects of Information Security Science (ISS) to the students of the "Information Security" specialization. Preferential attention is given to the ISS area with the longest history, namely cryptography. We trace exactly what ideas of fundamental importance for modern cryptography were formed in each of the historical periods, how these ideas can help students in mastering the training courses’ material, and how to communicate these ideas to students in the best way. The conclusions are based on the results of studies conducted over a few years at the "Cybernetics and Information Security" Faculty of the NRNU MEPhI, where our ideas are implemented in the educational process. We teach the history of cryptography in a few educational courses for Specialists in IS and Masters in Business Continuity and IS Maintenance in the form of intro- ductory and individual lectures and seminars. Specific recommendations on the use of the historical facts considered during the classes are given. Keywords: Information Security Science, Syllabus, Information Security Training, History of Cryptography 1 INTRODUCTION The study of any science’s history is a part of the syllabus for students in disciplines with deep historical roots. Cryptography is one of these areas. The earliest evidence of cryptographic techniques being used for text protection refers to the XX century BC, as is well known from the archaeological data. Thus, cryptography has a history of at least forty centuries. But for a long time this area of activity was not a scientific disci- pline in the modern sense of the word. Rather, it was an art known to a few people who know how to protect the content of written documents from prying. Information protection (IP), and especially cryptography, began to build actively on a scientific basis only in the late XIX – early XX century. It is due to the fundamental changes in modes of representation, transmission and transformation of information in new tech- nical systems such as the telegraph, telephone and various electromechanical devices. However, the IP method continued to be developed on the old basis until the mid XX century. The appearance of the well-known paper by Shannon, “Communication The- adfa, p. 1, 2015. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2015 ory of Secrecy Systems”, in 1949 and the rapid development of computer technology caused an irreversible transformation of cryptography in mathematical and computer science. The exploration of the rich heritage of pre-scientific cryptography has a huge cog- nitive and wide educational value for modern IS specialists because of the abundance of ingenious solutions and good practices gained during a long quest of many genera- tions. That makes it possible to avoid unnecessary repetition of mistakes and missteps when creating IP tools and to prevent accidents while designing cryptosystems. Certainly, the history of science should take into account not only the history of ideas in the relevant field of expertise, but also the history of all human activities related to the implementation of these ideas. However, in a few academic disciplines it is possible to track only the most important milestones in this history, i.e. the histo- ry of ideas in the field of cryptography and other ways of document protection. The history of the facts can be traced to a much lesser extent because of the limited time allotted for the study of academic disciplines. Therefore, it is possible to list the following reasons for including classes on the history of cryptology as a part of students’ training in the field of IS: Such a class demonstrates that cryptography as any other significant area of human activity has not only its own theory, but its own history as well. That history helps to better understand the theory, and vice versa; Such a class can help students better understand how modern cryptography (and ISS in general) was formed and developed, and the laws and patterns for the accu- mulation and generalization of human knowledge; Faced with the differences and diversity of forms of man’s thought and action through many centuries and countries, students can better understand their own identity and the role of modern science in historical processes. Thus, the paper is organized as follows. After discussing the purpose of introduc- ing the historical aspects of cryptography into the learning process in Section 2, we note the ways in which the history of cryptography is presented in the syllabus of training Specialists and Masters in the NRNU MEPhI. In Sections 3-6 we discuss in more detail how the most important ideas of the main periods in cryptography devel- opment (pre-scientific, classical science, transition phase from classical to modern science and modern science) can best be taught by the lecturers and studied by the students of a few courses on IS. Section 7 briefly presents some related works. The directions of future work are identified in conclusion. 2 FORMS OF HISTORY OF CRYPTOGRAPHY’S CLASSES In accordance with the state Russian educational standards, courses training Special- ists and Masters do not discuss the history of science. The "History and Methodology of Science" discipline is provided only for post-graduate students. In this regard, we have to look for other ways to have the students learn about the history of the field of science in the process of mastering the syllabus. Some ways are: introductory lectures on various subjects; scientific seminars; individual lectures on the "Humanitarian Issues of Information Security" and "Cryptographic Protocols and Standards" disciplines for the Specialists in IS; lectures and workshops as a part of the introductory discipline entitled "Fundamen- tals of Business Continuity and Information Security Maintenance" for the Mas- ters. Presenting history in the introductory lectures allows the instructor to place the studied disciplines into their general scientific context, to show communications and parallels with the other disciplines, including those devoted to the study of almost exclusively classical science such as basic mathematical and engineering disciplines. For example, it is very useful to draw a time axis with the major periods in the history of cryptography and to show the development of different areas of this science at the second half of the XX century at the introductory lecture on the "Cryptographic Pro- tocols and Standards" discipline (Fig. 1). Fig. 1. Scheme’s example used during the introductory lecture to the "Cryptographic Protocols and Standards" discipline, showing cryptography’s history periodization Our experience shows that the teachers of classes on the history of cryptography should have a good knowledge not only in the world history, but also in the founda- tions of cryptography. Since the classes are designed for the students specializing in mathematical and computer sciences, it is better that the teachers’ basic education is natural or computer sciences rather than humanitarian sciences. We recommend seminars in an interactive form. For example, all students take turns preparing reports, discussing them with their teachers and presenting them dur- ing the classes. The necessary requirements for getting credits for that part of an edu- cational course that includes one section on the history of cryptography are their own report presentation, reviewing 2-3 reports of other students, and participating in their discussions. In general, while planning the history of cryptography classes, we divide the histo- ry into the following periods: I. Pre-scientific period (from ancient times to the end of the XVII century); II. Classical science period, in which the scientific basis of cryptography was formed (XVIII–XIX centuries); III. Transition phase from classical to modern science (the end of the XIX century – the beginning of the XX century); and IV. Modern cryptography (the second half of the XX century – the beginning of the XXI century). The history of related sciences (e.g. steganography and methods of protection