The PlayStation 3  (PS3) can be used for exploiting bug.  Accordingto Computer World, an international team of security researchers used a farm of 200 PS3s to discover a flaw in an algorithm used to create authentication certificates for secured websites.The researchers used the PS3s to exploit a bug in the MD5 ...

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 the US are governed now. escrow A third party able ...

The 802.11 standard describes the communication that occurs in wireless local area networks (LANs). The Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) algorithm is used to protect wireless communication from eavesdropping. A secondary function of WEP is to prevent unauthorized access to a wireless network; this function is not an explicit ...

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 not know anything about the contents of the ...

If details of countermeasures employed in biometric systems are publicised, it may help attackers to avoid or defeat them. Similarly, if attackers know what countermeasures are not employed, this will help them identify potential weaknesses in the system, and direct attacks towards those weak areas. The counter-argument is that public exposure of countermeasures and ...

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 algorithm used to generate the signature must be such that ...

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 the encryption key), whereas asymmetric algorithms use a different key ...

Attempting to decrypt data by merely guessing the decryption key (symmetric key or private key); trying one key after another is called a brute-force attack. The length of a key determines the number of possible key values, and the number of possible values determines how easily a ...