Encryptions Algorithms

Sup

I understand encryption and how it works but am only familiar with certain algorithms, Ex:

blowfish
MD5
DES

I know there are alot more algorithms, and would like a list of either the most popular and effective or all of them. Any maybe if yall know any links that may discuss this in a descriptive manner, please let me know. Thanx

I took an intro course last semester on computer security (the encryption part of it). We covered:
RSA (based on not being able to factor large (200 digit) numbers into two primes)
Public-key Cryptography
DES (leads to 3-DES and AES; two modern techniques)
I can't remember what else we went over. Some of it is mathematically intensive. For RSA, I'd suggest reading on Galois Fields.
The links are introductory material on the algorithms but work through them. Let me know if you have any trouble.

Hi

BUDsmoker, as starting point I really can recommend wikipedia.org[1].
A few comments: There are two completely different kind of issues,
which are likely to be confused:

1. Encryption ciphers[2]

Encryption algorithms are used to encrypt and decrypt a message and
can be divided into two parts: Symmetric ones, like 3DES[3] and AES[4]
(the de-facto standards) , and asymmetric ones, like RSA[5] and Diffie-Hellman[6].

2. Hashing functions[7]

Hashing functions convert an input (typically a file) into a "hash"-value of
certain length. The main purpose is to confirm integrity. The two most famous
ones are MD5[8] and SHA1[9].

Note: Hashing functions cannot be used to encrypt/decrypt a message.
Knowing the hash does not contain enough information to reconstruct
the message uniquely (I am not talking about passwords here ).

Cheers and happy reading :)

[1] http://www.wikipedia.org
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encryption_algorithm
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3DES
[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AES
[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSA
[6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffie-Hellman
[7] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hash_function
[8] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MD5
[9] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SHA1

You clarified that alot more for me, I appreciate your help

you'll find some decent white papers on the subject at :

http://neworder.box.sk/