In addition to political parties, many different organizations were represented at Järvaveckan this year, among them Stockholm University. On Wednesday, Håkan Granath gave a talk about how encryption works to a small, but interested audience.
Håkan Granath explained the math behind encryption at Järvaveckan last week.
If you want to communicate with someone without being intercepted, or when you use the internet bank or buy something online, you must encrypt. And mathematics is needed to encrypt.
Encryption systems were already used in antiquity, among other things to protect important military messages. - Julius Caesar had a cipher named after him, the Caesar Cipher, but it was quite simple by today's standards, said Håkan, before he started talking about symmetric and asymmetric encryption.
The symmetric method is fast and simple, but requires a common key that both the sender and the receiver, but no one else, know. Asymmetric encryption works so that the key used to encrypt the message can be published openly for everyone, but only the person who has the secret key connected to it can decrypt the message.