So what does cryptography mean? cryptography: It is the study of encryption, the art/science to create and use codes and/or ciphers with the purpose of enciphering as well as deciphering. After a relatively vivid but slow development of cryptography for nearly 4.000 years the inventions of the telegraph, radio and computer had a high impact on the velocity of further inventions concerning encryption. Most of the time economic, political or military reasons lie behind the necessity of encryption. As visible from the timetable cryptography it is also done for private and individual interests. An extraordinary example for this is the Braille Code, developed as a possibility for blind people to read and write. A lot of very interesting and intelligent websites about cryptography can be found in the Internet.Some websites offering links to various cryptography-websites are: http://www.ciia.org/links.htm http://www.isse.gmu.edu/~njohnson/Security/stegres.htm http://www.hack.gr/users/dij/crypto/links.html http://www.achiever.com/freehmpg/cryptology/lessons.html http://www.iks-jena.de/mitarb/lutz/security/links.html http://world.std.com/~franl/crypto/ http://home.tu-clausthal.de/~inas/Links.html http://theory.lcs.mit.edu/~rivest/crypto-security.html http://www.britannica.com/bcom/eb/article/xref/0,5716,5453,00.html http://www-personal.umich.edu/~rak/web_sites.html Further there exists a wide range of web-magazines/newsletters/mailing lists on cryptography, e.g.: Crypto-Gram Newsletter: http://www.counterpane.com/crypto-gram.html Journal of Computer Security: http://www.gocsi.com/m_form.htm Cypherpunks: http://www.inet-one.com/cypherpunks/ Stegano-L: http://www.thur.de/ulf/stegano/sub.html ZD Internet Magazine: http://www.zdnet.com/

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Legal Protection: TRIPS (Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) Another important multilateral treaty concerned with intellectual property rights is the TRIPS agreement, which was devised at the inauguration of the Uruguay Round negotiations of the WTO in January 1995. It sets minimum standards for the national protection of intellectual property rights and procedures as well as remedies for their enforcement (enforcement measures include the potential for trade sanctions against non-complying WTO members). The TRIPS agreement has been widely criticized for its stipulation that biological organisms be subject to intellectual property protection. In 1999, 44 nations considered it appropriate to treat plant varieties as intellectual property. The complete TRIPS agreement can be found on: http://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/trips_e/t_agm1_e.htm

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International Cable Protection Committee (ICPC) The ICPC aims at reducing the number of incidents of damages to submarine telecommunications cables by hazards. The Committee also serves as a forum for the exchange of technical and legal information pertaining to submarine cable protection methods and programs and funds projects and programs, which are beneficial for the protection of submarine cables. Membership is restricted to authorities (governmental administrations or commercial companies) owning or operating submarine telecommunications cables. As of May 1999, 67 members representing 38 nations were members. http://www.iscpc.org

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IDEA IDEA is another symmetric-key system. It is a block cipher, operating on 64-bit plaintext blocks, having a key-length of 128 bits.

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