Being human, we always concern about our privacy. Privacy plays a significant role in our lives, right from starting on the day till the end of the day. As part of privacy, we want our data, messages to be secure. A common example is when we send a text message mostly expecting that only intended recipients should receive it.
So being intelligent, humans started manipulating a message in such ways that only the intended recipient should understand it. Manipulating a message is a very old technique to make sure data is secure. If we look back into history, In 44 BC Julius Caesar uses the technique now called Caesar Cipher to send secret messages. He used to shift the message letter by three positions down the alphabet. So, D would be replaced by A, E would become B, and so on.
Basically, secret writing is called Cryptography. From ancient times to this modern world, Cryptography has evolved rapidly. In today’s era almost every application, every message which we sent, the phone call we make, TV, the Internet everything uses Cryptography.
Now manipulating message or data in such ways that apart from the intended user no one can read it, is an Art. It has its own challenges and different, unique ways to hide the actual message data.
Earlier the Cryptography depends on mathematics. We can call Mathematics as Art but not Science. Modern cryptography is the intersection of mathematics, computer science, electrical engineering, communication science. So Modern Cryptography is not only limited to mathematics anymore, it’s a required a bit of experiment and systematic study to understand Cryptography.
Today perfect security is not present, we called system secure until there is no efficient algorithm available to break the system. So, to make sure there is no efficient algorithm needs experiments. I would say Modern Cryptography is a mixture of Art and Science. Art helps to invent a new system, Science helps to prove its ability to it.