The Adam and Eve of Cryptography, Meet Alice and Bob!

"In the begining God created the Heavens and the Earth" - Genesis 1:1

Did you know how and when Cryptography, as we know it, was created? And did you know that, just like in the Bible, there was even the Adam and Eve of Crypto's?

[Cartoon from Google Image: Wording Changed by me]
Cryptography, as we know it today, was released to the world through a seminal public-key cryptosystem paper in 1978 by three young cryptographers named Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir and Len Adleman. The first letter of their surnames were used to name the system with which most are familiar with today, RSA encryption!

But to explain how RSA encryption worked, these three introduced two fictitious characters in that paper, Alice and Bob, who have endured over time and are used even today to explain the concept. They have become the Adam and Eve of cryptography, used to make a complex subject easier to grasp, and also to humanize it!

So we have Alice and Bob! And over the years their usage has become more varied and complicated, and they seem to have gotten a life of there own! They have been figured in journal's, and even speeches throughout the world, to the point that every lecture or presentation on Cryptography starts off with "Alice wants to send a message to Bob.....", and it looks like things won't change soon.

But there have been competitors for this fame! Over time a lot of new pairs were thrown in but to no avail, Alice and Bob triumphed and are still around. And the other names proposed were lame, like Carol and Dave, or even the ingenious Lucy and Desi, which never caught on.

So you Crypto's out there, know as a fact that you are the progeny of Alice and Bob, the first beings in the Crypto Bible!
Amen!

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