questions on applied cryptography 1

Hi,

please answre these five questions:

1) What are the essential ingredients of a symmetric cipher?

2) What is a transposition cipher?

3) Using necessary block diagram, draw the important stages of any security algorithm used in digital signature development.

4) Describe the Elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) for developing encryption and decryption algorithms [please use scenarios]

5) Explain the latest challenges and applications of hash algorithms.

Thanks.