Category: Cryptography

A cryptogram is a block of text which has been rendered unreadable through the use of what is called a “substitution cypher”. This means that each letter used in the original text has been substituted with another (G becomes

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  In cryptography, a one-time pad is a system in which a private key generated randomly is used only once to encrypt a message that is then decrypted by the receiver using a matching one-time pad and key. Messages encrypted …

Refers to a cryptography or security product that makes exaggerated claims of what the product is capable of, giving the user a false sense of security. The term snake oil, which is credited to Matt Curtin

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algorithm A procedure or mathematical formula. Cryptographic algorithms convert plaintext to and from ciphertext. cipher Synonym for “cryptographic algorithm” cryptanalysis To solve or “break” a cryptosystem. EAR Export Administration Regulations. The rules under which the export of cryptographic software from …

Good cryptography is an excellent and necessary tool for almost anyone. Many
good cryptographic products are available commercially, as shareware, or
free. However, there are also extremely bad cryptographic products which not
only fail to provide security, but also contribute to the many
misconceptions …

The process of converting data into a coded form (ciphertext) to prevent it from being read and understood by an unauthorized party. 

Encryption refers to algorithmic schemes that encode plain text into non-readable form or cyphertext, providing privacy. The receiver

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Cryptanalysis is the art of deciphering encrypted communications without knowing the proper keys. Some of the more important cryptanalytic techniques are:

Cipher text only attack: This is the situation where the attacker does

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A digital signature is a block of data that was created using a secret key, and for which a public key can be used to verify that the signature was generated using the corresponding private key. The

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There are two classes of key-based algorithms, symmetric (or secret-key) and asymmetric (or public-key). The difference is that symmetric algorithms use the same key for encryption and decryption (or the decryption key is easily derived from

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Elliptic curve key pairs must be generated during the operation of each of the schemes specified in this
document. The key pair generation process requires a secure random or pseudorandom number generator.
Design of secure random and pseudorandom number generators is notoriously …

Elliptic curve points should be converted to octet strings as described in this section. Informally, if point
compression is being used, the idea is that the compressed y-coordinate is placed in the leftmost octet
of the octet string along with an indication …

The finite field F p is the prime finite field containing p elements. Although there is only one prime finite
field F p for each odd prime p, there are many different ways to represent the elements of F p.
Here the …