Ramatoulie Bah
Shayla R. Brooks
Dana Brown
Linwood Creekmore
Torreon N. Creekmore
Vincent Augustus Davis
Peter Eley
Danielle Graves
Paula Harrell
Golar Newby
Elizabeth Rascoe
Carl W. Seward
Eunice Smith
Rodney Stewart
Nelson Veale
Jordan Williams

Shayla Brooks
email: missbrooks20@hotmail.com

Mentor: Dr. Ernest Stitzinger
Internship: North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC
Title: An Investigation of Cryptography: Methods for Encryption and Decryption of Secret Messages

Cryptography is the study of techniques that can be used to disguise a message so that only the intended recipient can remove the disguise and read it. The investigator has explored cryptography and mathematical operations used to solve various cryptosystems. Some specific methods of cryptography were researched such as the Hill Cryptosystem for which the Hill Encryption Method and the generalized Hill Encryption Method were used. In addition, the investigator examined the RSA Cryptosystem and RSA encryption and decryption. Within the topic of the RSA cryptosystem subtopics such as, modular exponentiation, primality testing, integer factorization, and digital signatures were discussed. Furthermore, there was use of the ElGamal Cryptosystem and a new cryptosystem called the Chinese Remainder Theorem (CRT) in this project. Actual examples of these methods were illustrated by written exercises from the book entitled, Applications of Abstract Algebra with MAPLE. MAPLE software was integrated into the project to illustrate the enciphering and deciphering of messages using the various methods, and the investigator received hands-on practice with MAPLE from the written exercises in the text. Ultimately, this experiment has proven that there are various methods of solving cryptographic problems, by investigating a variety of cryptosystems and how they are used.