3.1 The history

20 8 9 19 9 19 1 19 5 3 18 5 20 (A coded message)

Picture some good ol' boys sitting around a poker table, smoking cigars, and drinking at the local saloon. Pistol Jack says, "I have an RC2, but I will raise you with a DES." Caught off guard, Tex Hunter says, "Well, if that is how you want to play, I will spike you with a triple-DES and match your RC2 with an MD5."

This all sounds like some high-stakes poker game, but what about those peculiar acronyms? In this game, our cowboys from west Texas were betting various encryption types. Now, they had no idea what they had or even what they were saying. Your job, if you choose to accept it, is to gain an understanding of what the acronyms mean and the impact this can have on how you do business on the Internet. So let's start with a bit of history. Once upon a time someone had a secret. . . .

Both Pistol Jack's and Tex Hunter's family histories trace back to a group of early pioneers known as the Securites. Pistol Jack's and Tex Hunter's ancestors had enemies known as the "Hacker Dudes." These bandits would listen in on the conversations that the Securites were having around the campfire about the next day's hunt. The Hacker Dudes would get the location of the next buffalo hunt and then go and scare off all the buffalo befofre the...