The Design and Use of Interactive Visualization Applets for Teaching Ciphers

Cryptography is a fundamental topic in an information assurance curriculum. Students should understand the basic concepts and weaknesses of both historical and current cipher algorithms. Visualization tools can help students understand these concepts, both in the classroom and as out-of-class exercises. This paper describes a set of such tools designed for a cryptography course at the United States Air Force Academy. The design goals, implementation details, and classroom experiences are addressed