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Lesson synopsis
Security has always been a major focus of computer science research, and with the explosion of Internet use by commerce, the need for secure transactions has taken on more urgency. Most recently, cyber-thieves demonstrated that true security on the Internet is going to require a new level of understanding of how to protect personal data, and more importantly, financial transactions. This lesson introduces two important concepts: public key encryption and one-way functions. It provides an opportunity for students to understand the underpinnings of almost all Internet security: they will come to appreciate that any lock can be eventually broken, and that theoretical computer scientists study ‘hard’ problems to lengthen the time it will take to break a lock. Note that this is not a lesson in encryption, but in how mathematics is used to secure information.