In this assignment, we were tasked with hiding a secret message within a picture that we created. We achieved this by transforming the letters from alphabetic to hexadecimal format and hiding them inside the hex values for the pixels of the image. We created the sentences, algorithm, and picture of ourselves. This was symmetric encryption because the key to encrypt was the same as the key to decrypt. We had to use math to change the numbers because it would be pretty easy to find out that ‘A’ is one and ‘B’ is two. We also hid the numbers inside one sixteenth place of our hex value so that the color wasn’t as effected.

Completing this assignment, I learned how to hide messages inside images and how scary it is. The image that I made looks identical to the naked eye, and you can’t see a difference, even though a message is hidden inside. Using steganography, you can hide anything anywhere, and nobody will know. Even if they do find out, if it’s encrypted well, you won’t know what they even hid. We also had to demonstrate a basic understanding of math and how to reverse operations when encrypting and decrypting. I would say that I am a four on mastery for this skill. I can explain this skill without little to no problems, and I’m confident in applying it as well.

When I was first learning, it was a problem to encrypt and decrypt. It sounds really simple on paper, just adding and multiplying, but with a long sentence, it can get really confusing really fast. Especially the decrypting since it’s backwards. I just had to keep trying slowly until I either fixed my issue or decrypted correctly. Redoing this assignment, I would plan myself out differently and do it a lot slower. This idea and concept are really simple, but with so many numbers, errors are bound to occur.