A Review of Modern Cryptography: From the World War II Era to the Big-Data Era

This chapter briefly surveys the rapid development of Modern Cryptography from World War II (WW-II) to the prevailing Big-Data Era. Cryptography is the art and science of secret communication, which concerns about C.I.A., i.e., Confidentiality, Integrity, and Authentication of information, so as to guarantee the safety during information transmission. Meanwhile Authentication is the key step in information security, where an excellent example is online payment systems, which belongs to the field of Financial Technology (Fin-Tech) and is booming on multiple markets in recent years. The concept “Quantum” is popular in the recent decade, and the possibilities of inventing Quantum Cryptosystems are also raised in the literature, which is a promising direction in Modern Cryptosystem. We also select two classical cryptosystems, i.e., the Merkle–Hellman knapsack cryptosystem, and the subset sum problem (SSP)-based cryptosystem to present the mechanisms in encryption and decryption processes. Apart from being a brief survey, this chapter is also intended as an entry point to guide readers to this interesting and important field.