Cryptography
<cryptography> The practise and study of
encryption and
decryption - encoding data so that it can only be decoded by specific individuals.
A system for encrypting and decrypting data is a cryptosystem.
These usually involve an
algorithm for combining the original data ("
plaintext") with one or more "keys" - numbers or strings of characters known only to the sender and/or recipient.
The resulting output is known as "
ciphertext".
The security of a cryptosystem usually depends on the secrecy of (some of) the keys rather than with the supposed secrecy of the
algorithm.
A strong cryptosystem has a large range of possible keys so that it is not possible to just try all possible keys (a "
brute force" approach).
A strong cryptosystem will produce ciphertext which appears random to all standard statistical tests.
A strong cryptosystem will resist all known previous methods for breaking codes ("
cryptanalysis").
See also
cryptology,
public-key encryption,
RSA.
Usenet newsgroups: news:sci.crypt, news:sci.crypt.research.
FAQ MIT (ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/cryptography-faq/).
Cryptography glossary (http://www.io.com/~ritter/GLOSSARY.HTM#BruteForceAttack).
RSA cryptography glossary (http://www.rsasecurity.com/rsalabs/faq/glossary.html).
Cryptography, PGP, and Your Privacy (http://draco.centerline.com:8080/~franl/crypto.html).
