A cryptography primer

First, we need to establish a clear differentiation between concepts that are often confused when talking about cryptography: encryption, encoding, obfuscation, and hashing:

• Encryption: This is the process of altering data through mathematical algorithms in order to make it unintelligible to unauthorized parties. Authorized parties are able to decrypt the message back to cleartext using a key. AES, DES, Blowfish, and RSA are well-known encryption algorithms.
• Encoding: This also alters the message, but its main goal is to allow that message to be processed by a different system. It doesn't require a key, and it's not considered a proper way of protecting information. Base64 encoding is commonly used in modern web applications to allow the transmission of binary data through HTTP.
• Obfuscation: This makes the original message harder to read by transforming the message. JavaScript code obfuscation is used to prevent debugging and/or protect intellectual property and its most...