“PALLADIUM CRYPTOGRAPHY”

1: ABSTRACT

As we tend towards a more and more computer centric world, the concept of data security has attained a paramount importance. Though present day security systems offer a good level of protection, they are incapable of providing a “trust worthy” environment and are vulnerable to unexpected attacks. Palladium is a content protection concept that has spawned from the belief that the pc, as it currently stands, is not architecturally equipped to protect a user forms the pitfalls and challenges that an all-pervasive network such as the Internet poses. As a drastic change in pc hardware is not feasible largely due to economic reasons, palladium hopes to introduce a minimal change in this front. A paradigm shift is awaited in this scenario with the advent of usage of palladium, thus making content protection a shared concern of both software and hardware. In the course of this paper the revolutionary aspects of palladium are discussed in detail.

2: INTRODUCTION
Cryptography is the method in which a message or file, called plain text, is taken and encrypted into cipher text in such a way that only authorized people know how to convert it back to plain text. This is done commonly in four ways:
Secret key cryptography, public key cryptography, one way function cryptography and digital signatures. Unless the encryption technique used is very complex it is possible, with some effort, for crackers to decrypt files.
Palladium is the code name for a revolutionary set of “features” for the “windows” operating system. The code name of this initiative –“palladium”, is a moniker drawn from the Greek mythological goddess of wisdom and protector of civilized life. Till date most forms of data security have been software oriented with little or no hardware involvement. Palladium can be touted as the first technology to develop