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105-444: In cryptography , SAFER ( Secure And Fast Encryption Routine ) is the name of a family of block ciphers designed primarily by James Massey (one of the designers of IDEA ) on behalf of Cylink Corporation. The early SAFER K and SAFER SK designs share the same encryption function, but differ in the number of rounds and the key schedule . More recent versions — SAFER+ and SAFER++ — were submitted as candidates to

210-473: A chosen-plaintext attack , Eve may choose a plaintext and learn its corresponding ciphertext (perhaps many times); an example is gardening , used by the British during WWII. In a chosen-ciphertext attack , Eve may be able to choose ciphertexts and learn their corresponding plaintexts. Finally in a man-in-the-middle attack Eve gets in between Alice (the sender) and Bob (the recipient), accesses and modifies

315-428: A classical cipher (and some modern ciphers) will reveal statistical information about the plaintext, and that information can often be used to break the cipher. After the discovery of frequency analysis , nearly all such ciphers could be broken by an informed attacker. Such classical ciphers still enjoy popularity today, though mostly as puzzles (see cryptogram ). The Arab mathematician and polymath Al-Kindi wrote

420-418: A health care professional to share their information with another healthcare professional, even one giving them care—but are advised, where appropriate, about the dangers of this course of action, due to possible drug interactions. However, in a few limited instances, a healthcare worker can share personal information without consent if it is in the public interest. These instances are set out in guidance from

525-638: A book on cryptography entitled Risalah fi Istikhraj al-Mu'amma ( Manuscript for the Deciphering Cryptographic Messages ), which described the first known use of frequency analysis cryptanalysis techniques. Language letter frequencies may offer little help for some extended historical encryption techniques such as homophonic cipher that tend to flatten the frequency distribution. For those ciphers, language letter group (or n-gram) frequencies may provide an attack. Essentially all ciphers remained vulnerable to cryptanalysis using

630-572: A client was about to commit murder or assault. The Supreme Court of California promptly amended the California Rules of Professional Conduct to conform to the new exception in the revised statute. Recent legislation in the UK curtails the confidentiality professionals like lawyers and accountants can maintain at the expense of the state. Accountants, for example, are required to disclose to the state any suspicions of fraudulent accounting and, even,

735-430: A cryptographic hash function is computed, and only the resulting hash is digitally signed. Cryptographic hash functions are functions that take a variable-length input and return a fixed-length output, which can be used in, for example, a digital signature. For a hash function to be secure, it must be difficult to compute two inputs that hash to the same value ( collision resistance ) and to compute an input that hashes to

840-406: A diffusion layer. In the first key-mixing stage, the plaintext block is divided into eight 8-bit segments, and subkeys are added using either addition modulo 256 (denoted by a "+" in a square) or XOR (denoted by a "+" in a circle). The substitution layer consists of two S-boxes , each the inverse of each other, derived from discrete exponentiation (45) and logarithm (log 45 x) functions. After

945-440: A distrustful client might hide a relevant fact he thinks is incriminating, but that a skilled lawyer could turn to the client's advantage (for example, by raising affirmative defenses like self-defense). However, most jurisdictions have exceptions for situations where the lawyer has reason to believe that the client may kill or seriously injure someone, may cause substantial injury to the financial interest or property of another, or

1050-516: A given output ( preimage resistance ). MD4 is a long-used hash function that is now broken; MD5 , a strengthened variant of MD4, is also widely used but broken in practice. The US National Security Agency developed the Secure Hash Algorithm series of MD5-like hash functions: SHA-0 was a flawed algorithm that the agency withdrew; SHA-1 is widely deployed and more secure than MD5, but cryptanalysts have identified attacks against it;

1155-486: A good cipher to maintain confidentiality under an attack. This fundamental principle was first explicitly stated in 1883 by Auguste Kerckhoffs and is generally called Kerckhoffs's Principle ; alternatively and more bluntly, it was restated by Claude Shannon , the inventor of information theory and the fundamentals of theoretical cryptography, as Shannon's Maxim —'the enemy knows the system'. Different physical devices and aids have been used to assist with ciphers. One of

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1260-428: A hashed output that cannot be used to retrieve the original input data. Cryptographic hash functions are used to verify the authenticity of data retrieved from an untrusted source or to add a layer of security. Symmetric-key cryptosystems use the same key for encryption and decryption of a message, although a message or group of messages can have a different key than others. A significant disadvantage of symmetric ciphers

1365-440: A keystream (in place of a Pseudorandom number generator ) and applying an XOR operation to each bit of the plaintext with each bit of the keystream. Message authentication codes (MACs) are much like cryptographic hash functions , except that a secret key can be used to authenticate the hash value upon receipt; this additional complication blocks an attack scheme against bare digest algorithms , and so has been thought worth

1470-414: A more specific meaning: the replacement of a unit of plaintext (i.e., a meaningful word or phrase) with a code word (for example, "wallaby" replaces "attack at dawn"). A cypher, in contrast, is a scheme for changing or substituting an element below such a level (a letter, a syllable, or a pair of letters, etc.) to produce a cyphertext. Cryptanalysis is the term used for the study of methods for obtaining

1575-415: A patient's consent to share personal confidential information is assumed. When personal confidential information is shared between healthcare workers, consent is taken as implied. If a patient doesn't want a healthcare worker to share confidential health information, they need to make this clear and discuss the matter with healthcare staff. Patients have the right, in most situations, to refuse permission for

1680-846: A second key-mixing stage there is the diffusion layer: a novel cryptographic component termed a pseudo-Hadamard transform ( PHT ). (The PHT was also later used in the Twofish cipher.) There are two more-recent members of the SAFER family that have made changes to the main encryption routine, designed by the Armenian cryptographers Gurgen Khachatrian (American University of Armenia) and Melsik Kuregian in conjunction with Massey. Cryptography Cryptography , or cryptology (from Ancient Greek : κρυπτός , romanized :  kryptós "hidden, secret"; and γράφειν graphein , "to write", or -λογία -logia , "study", respectively ),

1785-476: A secret key is used to process the message (or a hash of the message, or both), and one for verification , in which the matching public key is used with the message to check the validity of the signature. RSA and DSA are two of the most popular digital signature schemes. Digital signatures are central to the operation of public key infrastructures and many network security schemes (e.g., SSL/TLS , many VPNs , etc.). Public-key algorithms are most often based on

1890-520: A security perspective to develop a new standard to "significantly improve the robustness of NIST 's overall hash algorithm toolkit." Thus, a hash function design competition was meant to select a new U.S. national standard, to be called SHA-3 , by 2012. The competition ended on October 2, 2012, when the NIST announced that Keccak would be the new SHA-3 hash algorithm. Unlike block and stream ciphers that are invertible, cryptographic hash functions produce

1995-424: A set of rules or a promise usually executed through confidentiality agreements that limits the access to or places restrictions on the distribution of certain types of information . By law, lawyers are often required to keep confidential anything on the representation of a client. The duty of confidentiality is much broader than the attorney–client evidentiary privilege , which only covers communications between

2100-464: A shared secret key. In practice, asymmetric systems are used to first exchange a secret key, and then secure communication proceeds via a more efficient symmetric system using that key. Examples of asymmetric systems include Diffie–Hellman key exchange , RSA ( Rivest–Shamir–Adleman ), ECC ( Elliptic Curve Cryptography ), and Post-quantum cryptography . Secure symmetric algorithms include the commonly used AES ( Advanced Encryption Standard ) which replaced

2205-406: A story by Edgar Allan Poe . Until modern times, cryptography referred almost exclusively to "encryption", which is the process of converting ordinary information (called plaintext ) into an unintelligible form (called ciphertext ). Decryption is the reverse, in other words, moving from the unintelligible ciphertext back to plaintext. A cipher (or cypher) is a pair of algorithms that carry out

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2310-606: A stream cipher. The Data Encryption Standard (DES) and the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) are block cipher designs that have been designated cryptography standards by the US government (though DES's designation was finally withdrawn after the AES was adopted). Despite its deprecation as an official standard, DES (especially its still-approved and much more secure triple-DES variant) remains quite popular; it

2415-473: A variant incorporating new key schedule designed by the Singapore Ministry for Home affairs: SAFER K-128 . However, both Lars Knudsen and Sean Murphy found minor weaknesses in this version, prompting a redesign of the key schedule to one suggested by Knudsen; these variants were named SAFER SK-64 and SAFER SK-128 respectively — the "SK" standing for "Strengthened Key schedule", though

2520-465: A wide variety of cryptanalytic attacks, and they can be classified in any of several ways. A common distinction turns on what Eve (an attacker) knows and what capabilities are available. In a ciphertext-only attack , Eve has access only to the ciphertext (good modern cryptosystems are usually effectively immune to ciphertext-only attacks). In a known-plaintext attack , Eve has access to a ciphertext and its corresponding plaintext (or to many such pairs). In

2625-446: A widely used tool in communications, computer networks , and computer security generally. Some modern cryptographic techniques can only keep their keys secret if certain mathematical problems are intractable , such as the integer factorization or the discrete logarithm problems, so there are deep connections with abstract mathematics . There are very few cryptosystems that are proven to be unconditionally secure. The one-time pad

2730-488: Is about to, provide the patient directly with healthcare to make sure they get the best possible treatment. They only share information that is relevant to their care in that instance, and with consent. There are two ways to give consent: explicit consent or implied consent . Explicit consent is when a patient clearly communicates to a healthcare worker, verbally or in writing or in some other way, that relevant confidential information can be shared. Implied consent means that

2835-417: Is also active research examining the relationship between cryptographic problems and quantum physics . Just as the development of digital computers and electronics helped in cryptanalysis, it made possible much more complex ciphers. Furthermore, computers allowed for the encryption of any kind of data representable in any binary format, unlike classical ciphers which only encrypted written language texts; this

2940-497: Is also widely used but broken in practice. The US National Security Agency developed the Secure Hash Algorithm series of MD5-like hash functions: SHA-0 was a flawed algorithm that the agency withdrew; SHA-1 is widely deployed and more secure than MD5, but cryptanalysts have identified attacks against it; the SHA-2 family improves on SHA-1, but is vulnerable to clashes as of 2011; and the US standards authority thought it "prudent" from

3045-694: Is based in law, in the NHS Constitution, and in key NHS rules and procedures. It is also outlined in every NHS employee's contract of employment and in professional standards set by regulatory bodies. The National AIDS Trust's Confidentiality in the NHS: Your Information, Your Rights outlines these rights. All registered healthcare professionals must abide by these standards and if they are found to have breached confidentiality, they can face disciplinary action. A healthcare worker shares confidential information with someone else who is, or

3150-408: Is beyond the ability of any adversary. This means it must be shown that no efficient method (as opposed to the time-consuming brute force method) can be found to break the cipher. Since no such proof has been found to date, the one-time-pad remains the only theoretically unbreakable cipher. Although well-implemented one-time-pad encryption cannot be broken, traffic analysis is still possible. There are

3255-443: Is called cryptolinguistics . Cryptolingusitics is especially used in military intelligence applications for deciphering foreign communications. Before the modern era, cryptography focused on message confidentiality (i.e., encryption)—conversion of messages from a comprehensible form into an incomprehensible one and back again at the other end, rendering it unreadable by interceptors or eavesdroppers without secret knowledge (namely

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3360-648: Is claimed to have developed the Diffie–Hellman key exchange. Public-key cryptography is also used for implementing digital signature schemes. A digital signature is reminiscent of an ordinary signature; they both have the characteristic of being easy for a user to produce, but difficult for anyone else to forge . Digital signatures can also be permanently tied to the content of the message being signed; they cannot then be 'moved' from one document to another, for any attempt will be detectable. In digital signature schemes, there are two algorithms: one for signing , in which

3465-399: Is combined with the plaintext bit-by-bit or character-by-character, somewhat like the one-time pad . In a stream cipher, the output stream is created based on a hidden internal state that changes as the cipher operates. That internal state is initially set up using the secret key material. RC4 is a widely used stream cipher. Block ciphers can be used as stream ciphers by generating blocks of

3570-471: Is determined by the use of negative and positive freedom. Some legal jurisdictions recognise a category of commercial confidentiality whereby a business may withhold information on the basis of perceived harm to "commercial interests". For example, Coca-Cola 's main syrup formula remains a trade secret . Confidentiality agreements that "seal" litigation settlements are not uncommon, but this can leave regulators and society ignorant of public hazards. In

3675-560: Is impossible; it is quite unusable in practice. The discrete logarithm problem is the basis for believing some other cryptosystems are secure, and again, there are related, less practical systems that are provably secure relative to the solvability or insolvability discrete log problem. As well as being aware of cryptographic history, cryptographic algorithm and system designers must also sensibly consider probable future developments while working on their designs. For instance, continuous improvements in computer processing power have increased

3780-617: Is one, and was proven to be so by Claude Shannon. There are a few important algorithms that have been proven secure under certain assumptions. For example, the infeasibility of factoring extremely large integers is the basis for believing that RSA is secure, and some other systems, but even so, proof of unbreakability is unavailable since the underlying mathematical problem remains open. In practice, these are widely used, and are believed unbreakable in practice by most competent observers. There are systems similar to RSA, such as one by Michael O. Rabin that are provably secure provided factoring n = pq

3885-765: Is relatively recent, beginning in the mid-1970s. In the early 1970s IBM personnel designed the Data Encryption Standard (DES) algorithm that became the first federal government cryptography standard in the United States. In 1976 Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman published the Diffie–Hellman key exchange algorithm. In 1977 the RSA algorithm was published in Martin Gardner 's Scientific American column. Since then, cryptography has become

3990-454: Is the key management necessary to use them securely. Each distinct pair of communicating parties must, ideally, share a different key, and perhaps for each ciphertext exchanged as well. The number of keys required increases as the square of the number of network members, which very quickly requires complex key management schemes to keep them all consistent and secret. In a groundbreaking 1976 paper, Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman proposed

4095-827: Is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of adversarial behavior. More generally, cryptography is about constructing and analyzing protocols that prevent third parties or the public from reading private messages. Modern cryptography exists at the intersection of the disciplines of mathematics, computer science , information security , electrical engineering , digital signal processing , physics, and others. Core concepts related to information security ( data confidentiality , data integrity , authentication , and non-repudiation ) are also central to cryptography. Practical applications of cryptography include electronic commerce , chip-based payment cards , digital currencies , computer passwords , and military communications . Cryptography prior to

4200-499: Is theoretically possible to break into a well-designed system, it is infeasible in actual practice to do so. Such schemes, if well designed, are therefore termed "computationally secure". Theoretical advances (e.g., improvements in integer factorization algorithms) and faster computing technology require these designs to be continually reevaluated and, if necessary, adapted. Information-theoretically secure schemes that provably cannot be broken even with unlimited computing power, such as

4305-439: Is to find some weakness or insecurity in a cryptographic scheme, thus permitting its subversion or evasion. It is a common misconception that every encryption method can be broken. In connection with his WWII work at Bell Labs , Claude Shannon proved that the one-time pad cipher is unbreakable, provided the key material is truly random , never reused, kept secret from all possible attackers, and of equal or greater length than

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4410-469: Is to succeed. First, the information itself, in the words of Lord Greene, M.R. in the Saltman case on page 215, must "have the necessary quality of confidence about it." Secondly, that information must have been imparted in circumstances importing an obligation of confidence. Thirdly, there must be an unauthorised use of that information to the detriment of the party communicating it. The 1896 case featuring

4515-434: Is typically the case that use of a quality cipher is very efficient (i.e., fast and requiring few resources, such as memory or CPU capability), while breaking it requires an effort many orders of magnitude larger, and vastly larger than that required for any classical cipher, making cryptanalysis so inefficient and impractical as to be effectively impossible. Symmetric-key cryptography refers to encryption methods in which both

4620-419: Is used across a wide range of applications, from ATM encryption to e-mail privacy and secure remote access . Many other block ciphers have been designed and released, with considerable variation in quality. Many, even some designed by capable practitioners, have been thoroughly broken, such as FEAL . Stream ciphers, in contrast to the 'block' type, create an arbitrarily long stream of key material, which

4725-448: Is using (or seeking to use) the lawyer's services to perpetrate a crime or fraud. In such situations the lawyer has the discretion, but not the obligation, to disclose information designed to prevent the planned action. Most states have a version of this discretionary disclosure rule under Rules of Professional Conduct, Rule 1.6 (or its equivalent). A few jurisdictions have made this traditionally discretionary duty mandatory. For example, see

4830-503: The AES process and the NESSIE project respectively. All of the algorithms in the SAFER family are unpatented and available for unrestricted use. The first SAFER cipher was SAFER K-64 , published by Massey in 1993, with a 64-bit block size . The "K-64" denotes a key size of 64 bits. There was some demand for a version with a larger 128-bit key , and the following year Massey published such

4935-492: The RSA FAQ reports that, "one joke has it that SK really stands for 'Stop Knudsen', a wise precaution in the design of any block cipher". Another variant with a reduced key size was published, SAFER SK-40 , to comply with 40-bit export restrictions. All of these ciphers use the same round function consisting of four stages, as shown in the diagram: a key-mixing stage, a substitution layer, another key-mixing stage, and finally

5040-442: The SHA-2 family improves on SHA-1, but is vulnerable to clashes as of 2011; and the US standards authority thought it "prudent" from a security perspective to develop a new standard to "significantly improve the robustness of NIST 's overall hash algorithm toolkit." Thus, a hash function design competition was meant to select a new U.S. national standard, to be called SHA-3 , by 2012. The competition ended on October 2, 2012, when

5145-557: The computational complexity of "hard" problems, often from number theory . For example, the hardness of RSA is related to the integer factorization problem, while Diffie–Hellman and DSA are related to the discrete logarithm problem. The security of elliptic curve cryptography is based on number theoretic problems involving elliptic curves . Because of the difficulty of the underlying problems, most public-key algorithms involve operations such as modular multiplication and exponentiation, which are much more computationally expensive than

5250-519: The good clinical practice inspections in accordance with applicable national and international requirements. A typical patient declaration might read: I have been informed of the benefit that I gain from the protection and the rights granted by the European Union Data Protection Directive and other national laws on the protection of my personal data. I agree that the representatives of the sponsor or possibly

5355-508: The one-time pad , are much more difficult to use in practice than the best theoretically breakable but computationally secure schemes. The growth of cryptographic technology has raised a number of legal issues in the Information Age . Cryptography's potential for use as a tool for espionage and sedition has led many governments to classify it as a weapon and to limit or even prohibit its use and export. In some jurisdictions where

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5460-635: The rāz-saharīya which was used to communicate secret messages with other countries. David Kahn notes in The Codebreakers that modern cryptology originated among the Arabs , the first people to systematically document cryptanalytic methods. Al-Khalil (717–786) wrote the Book of Cryptographic Messages , which contains the first use of permutations and combinations to list all possible Arabic words with and without vowels. Ciphertexts produced by

5565-510: The therapeutic alliance , as it promotes an environment of trust. There are important exceptions to confidentiality, namely where it conflicts with the clinician's duty to warn or duty to protect . This includes instances of suicidal behavior or homicidal plans, child abuse , elder abuse and dependent adult abuse . Information shared by a client with a therapist is considered as privileged communication , however in certain cases and based on certain provinces and states they are negated, it

5670-558: The 20th century, and several patented, among them rotor machines —famously including the Enigma machine used by the German government and military from the late 1920s and during World War II . The ciphers implemented by better quality examples of these machine designs brought about a substantial increase in cryptanalytic difficulty after WWI. Cryptanalysis of the new mechanical ciphering devices proved to be both difficult and laborious. In

5775-571: The General Medical Council, which is the regulatory body for doctors. Sometimes the healthcare worker has to provide the information – if required by law or in response to a court order. The National AIDS Trust has written a guide for people living with HIV to confidentiality in the NHS. The ethical principle of confidentiality requires that information shared by a client with a therapist isn't shared without consent, and that

5880-503: The Government Communications Headquarters ( GCHQ ), a British intelligence organization, revealed that cryptographers at GCHQ had anticipated several academic developments. Reportedly, around 1970, James H. Ellis had conceived the principles of asymmetric key cryptography. In 1973, Clifford Cocks invented a solution that was very similar in design rationale to RSA. In 1974, Malcolm J. Williamson

5985-583: The Kautiliyam, the cipher letter substitutions are based on phonetic relations, such as vowels becoming consonants. In the Mulavediya, the cipher alphabet consists of pairing letters and using the reciprocal ones. In Sassanid Persia , there were two secret scripts, according to the Muslim author Ibn al-Nadim : the šāh-dabīrīya (literally "King's script") which was used for official correspondence, and

6090-402: The NIST announced that Keccak would be the new SHA-3 hash algorithm. Unlike block and stream ciphers that are invertible, cryptographic hash functions produce a hashed output that cannot be used to retrieve the original input data. Cryptographic hash functions are used to verify the authenticity of data retrieved from an untrusted source or to add a layer of security. The goal of cryptanalysis

6195-492: The New Jersey and Virginia Rules of Professional Conduct, Rule 1.6. In some jurisdictions, the lawyer must try to convince the client to conform his or her conduct to the boundaries of the law before disclosing any otherwise confidential information. These exceptions generally do not cover crimes that have already occurred, even in extreme cases where murderers have confessed the location of missing bodies to their lawyers but

6300-501: The U.S. state of Washington, for example, journalists discovered that about two dozen medical malpractice cases had been improperly sealed by judges, leading to improperly weak discipline by the state Department of Health. In the 1990s and early 2000s, the Catholic sexual abuse scandal involved a number of confidentiality agreements with victims. Some states have passed laws that limit confidentiality. For example, in 1990 Florida passed

6405-660: The United Kingdom, cryptanalytic efforts at Bletchley Park during WWII spurred the development of more efficient means for carrying out repetitive tasks, such as military code breaking (decryption) . This culminated in the development of the Colossus , the world's first fully electronic, digital, programmable computer, which assisted in the decryption of ciphers generated by the German Army's Lorenz SZ40/42 machine. Extensive open academic research into cryptography

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6510-474: The amusement of literate observers rather than as a way of concealing information. The Greeks of Classical times are said to have known of ciphers (e.g., the scytale transposition cipher claimed to have been used by the Spartan military). Steganography (i.e., hiding even the existence of a message so as to keep it confidential) was also first developed in ancient times. An early example, from Herodotus ,

6615-399: The attorney and the client. Both the privilege and the duty serve the purpose of encouraging clients to speak frankly about their cases. This way, lawyers can carry out their duty to provide clients with zealous representation. Otherwise, the opposing side may be able to surprise the lawyer in court with something he did not know about his client, which may weaken the client's position. Also,

6720-453: The combined study of cryptography and cryptanalysis. English is more flexible than several other languages in which "cryptology" (done by cryptologists) is always used in the second sense above. RFC   2828 advises that steganography is sometimes included in cryptology. The study of characteristics of languages that have some application in cryptography or cryptology (e.g. frequency data, letter combinations, universal patterns, etc.)

6825-428: The cryptanalytically uninformed. It was finally explicitly recognized in the 19th century that secrecy of a cipher's algorithm is not a sensible nor practical safeguard of message security; in fact, it was further realized that any adequate cryptographic scheme (including ciphers) should remain secure even if the adversary fully understands the cipher algorithm itself. Security of the key used should alone be sufficient for

6930-603: The doctor. Confidentiality is commonly applied to conversations between doctors and patients. Legal protections prevent physicians from revealing certain discussions with patients, even under oath in court. This physician-patient privilege only applies to secrets shared between physician and patient during the course of providing medical care. The rule dates back to at least the Hippocratic Oath , which reads in part: Whatever, in connection with my professional service, or not in connection with it, I see or hear, in

7035-655: The earliest may have been the scytale of ancient Greece, a rod supposedly used by the Spartans as an aid for a transposition cipher. In medieval times, other aids were invented such as the cipher grille , which was also used for a kind of steganography. With the invention of polyalphabetic ciphers came more sophisticated aids such as Alberti's own cipher disk , Johannes Trithemius ' tabula recta scheme, and Thomas Jefferson 's wheel cypher (not publicly known, and reinvented independently by Bazeries around 1900). Many mechanical encryption/decryption devices were invented early in

7140-612: The early 20th century, cryptography was mainly concerned with linguistic and lexicographic patterns. Since then cryptography has broadened in scope, and now makes extensive use of mathematical subdisciplines, including information theory, computational complexity , statistics, combinatorics , abstract algebra , number theory , and finite mathematics . Cryptography is also a branch of engineering, but an unusual one since it deals with active, intelligent, and malevolent opposition; other kinds of engineering (e.g., civil or chemical engineering) need deal only with neutral natural forces. There

7245-409: The effort. Cryptographic hash functions are a third type of cryptographic algorithm. They take a message of any length as input, and output a short, fixed-length hash , which can be used in (for example) a digital signature. For good hash functions, an attacker cannot find two messages that produce the same hash. MD4 is a long-used hash function that is now broken; MD5 , a strengthened variant of MD4,

7350-549: The encryption and decryption algorithms that correspond to each key. Keys are important both formally and in actual practice, as ciphers without variable keys can be trivially broken with only the knowledge of the cipher used and are therefore useless (or even counter-productive) for most purposes. Historically, ciphers were often used directly for encryption or decryption without additional procedures such as authentication or integrity checks. There are two main types of cryptosystems: symmetric and asymmetric . In symmetric systems,

7455-506: The encryption and the reversing decryption. The detailed operation of a cipher is controlled both by the algorithm and, in each instance, by a "key". The key is a secret (ideally known only to the communicants), usually a string of characters (ideally short so it can be remembered by the user), which is needed to decrypt the ciphertext. In formal mathematical terms, a " cryptosystem " is the ordered list of elements of finite possible plaintexts, finite possible cyphertexts, finite possible keys, and

7560-487: The field since polyalphabetic substitution emerged in the Renaissance". In public-key cryptosystems, the public key may be freely distributed, while its paired private key must remain secret. In a public-key encryption system, the public key is used for encryption, while the private or secret key is used for decryption. While Diffie and Hellman could not find such a system, they showed that public-key cryptography

7665-406: The foundations of modern cryptography and provided a mathematical basis for future cryptography. His 1949 paper has been noted as having provided a "solid theoretical basis for cryptography and for cryptanalysis", and as having turned cryptography from an "art to a science". As a result of his contributions and work, he has been described as the "founding father of modern cryptography". Prior to

7770-415: The frequency analysis technique until the development of the polyalphabetic cipher , most clearly by Leon Battista Alberti around the year 1467, though there is some indication that it was already known to Al-Kindi. Alberti's innovation was to use different ciphers (i.e., substitution alphabets) for various parts of a message (perhaps for each successive plaintext letter at the limit). He also invented what

7875-399: The health authorities can have access to my medical records. My participation in the study will be treated as confidential. I will not be referred to by my name in any report of the study. My identity will not be disclosed to any person, except for the purposes described above and in the event of a medical emergency or if required by the law. My data will be processed electronically to determine

7980-497: The key needed for decryption of that message). Encryption attempted to ensure secrecy in communications, such as those of spies , military leaders, and diplomats. In recent decades, the field has expanded beyond confidentiality concerns to include techniques for message integrity checking, sender/receiver identity authentication, digital signatures , interactive proofs and secure computation , among others. The main classical cipher types are transposition ciphers , which rearrange

8085-529: The knowledge of the patient's parents. Many states in the U.S. have laws governing parental notification in underage abortion. Confidentiality can be protected in medical research via certificates of confidentiality . Due to the EU Directive 2001/20/EC , inspectors appointed by the Member States have to maintain confidentiality whenever they gain access to confidential information as a result of

8190-454: The legitimate use of tax saving schemes if those schemes are not already known to the tax authorities. The "three traditional requirements of the cause of action for breach of confidence" were identified by Megarry J in Coco v A N Clark (Engineers) Ltd (1968) in the following terms: In my judgment, three elements are normally required if, apart from contract, a case of breach of confidence

8295-504: The life of men, which ought not to be spoken of abroad, I will not divulge, as reckoning that all such should be kept secret. Traditionally, medical ethics has viewed the duty of confidentiality as a relatively non-negotiable tenet of medical practice. Confidentiality is standard in the United States by HIPAA laws, specifically the Privacy Rule, and various state laws, some more rigorous than HIPAA. However, numerous exceptions to

8400-493: The meaning of encrypted information without access to the key normally required to do so; i.e., it is the study of how to "crack" encryption algorithms or their implementations. Some use the terms "cryptography" and "cryptology" interchangeably in English, while others (including US military practice generally) use "cryptography" to refer specifically to the use and practice of cryptographic techniques and "cryptology" to refer to

8505-462: The message. Most ciphers , apart from the one-time pad, can be broken with enough computational effort by brute force attack , but the amount of effort needed may be exponentially dependent on the key size, as compared to the effort needed to make use of the cipher. In such cases, effective security could be achieved if it is proven that the effort required (i.e., "work factor", in Shannon's terms)

8610-417: The modern age was effectively synonymous with encryption , converting readable information ( plaintext ) to unintelligible nonsense text ( ciphertext ), which can only be read by reversing the process ( decryption ). The sender of an encrypted (coded) message shares the decryption (decoding) technique only with the intended recipients to preclude access from adversaries. The cryptography literature often uses

8715-681: The names "Alice" (or "A") for the sender, "Bob" (or "B") for the intended recipient, and "Eve" (or "E") for the eavesdropping adversary. Since the development of rotor cipher machines in World War ;I and the advent of computers in World War II , cryptography methods have become increasingly complex and their applications more varied. Modern cryptography is heavily based on mathematical theory and computer science practice; cryptographic algorithms are designed around computational hardness assumptions , making such algorithms hard to break in actual practice by any adversary. While it

8820-553: The notion of public-key (also, more generally, called asymmetric key ) cryptography in which two different but mathematically related keys are used—a public key and a private key. A public key system is so constructed that calculation of one key (the 'private key') is computationally infeasible from the other (the 'public key'), even though they are necessarily related. Instead, both keys are generated secretly, as an interrelated pair. The historian David Kahn described public-key cryptography as "the most revolutionary new concept in

8925-448: The older DES ( Data Encryption Standard ). Insecure symmetric algorithms include children's language tangling schemes such as Pig Latin or other cant , and all historical cryptographic schemes, however seriously intended, prior to the invention of the one-time pad early in the 20th century. In colloquial use, the term " code " is often used to mean any method of encryption or concealment of meaning. However, in cryptography, code has

9030-432: The only ones known until the 1970s, the same secret key encrypts and decrypts a message. Data manipulation in symmetric systems is significantly faster than in asymmetric systems. Asymmetric systems use a "public key" to encrypt a message and a related "private key" to decrypt it. The advantage of asymmetric systems is that the public key can be freely published, allowing parties to establish secure communication without having

9135-543: The order of letters in a message (e.g., 'hello world' becomes 'ehlol owrdl' in a trivially simple rearrangement scheme), and substitution ciphers , which systematically replace letters or groups of letters with other letters or groups of letters (e.g., 'fly at once' becomes 'gmz bu podf' by replacing each letter with the one following it in the Latin alphabet ). Simple versions of either have never offered much confidentiality from enterprising opponents. An early substitution cipher

9240-550: The outcome of this study, and to provide it to the health authorities. My data may be transferred to other countries (such as the USA). For these purposes the sponsor has to protect my personal information even in countries whose data privacy laws are less strict than those of this country. In the United Kingdom information about an individual's HIV status is kept confidential within the National Health Service . This

9345-710: The police are still looking for those bodies. The U.S. Supreme Court and many state supreme courts have affirmed the right of a lawyer to withhold information in such situations. Otherwise, it would be impossible for any criminal defendant to obtain a zealous defense. California is famous for having one of the strongest duties of confidentiality in the world; its lawyers must protect client confidences at "every peril to himself [or herself]" under former California Business and Professions Code section 6068(e). Until an amendment in 2004 (which turned subsection (e) into subsection (e)(1) and added subsection (e)(2) to section 6068), California lawyers were not even permitted to disclose that

9450-421: The possible keys, to reach a point at which chances are better than even that the key sought will have been found. But this may not be enough assurance; a linear cryptanalysis attack against DES requires 2 known plaintexts (with their corresponding ciphertexts) and approximately 2 DES operations. This is a considerable improvement over brute force attacks. Confidentiality Confidentiality involves

9555-427: The royal accoucheur Dr William Smoult Playfair showed the difference between lay and medical views. Playfair was consulted by Linda Kitson; he ascertained that she had been pregnant while separated from her husband. He informed his wife, a relative of Kitson's, in order that she protect herself and their daughters from moral contagion. Kitson sued, and the case gained public notoriety, with huge damages awarded against

9660-489: The rules have been carved out over the years. For example, many American states require physicians to report gunshot wounds to the police and impaired drivers to the Department of Motor Vehicles. Confidentiality is also challenged in cases involving the diagnosis of a sexually transmitted disease in a patient who refuses to reveal the diagnosis to a spouse, and in the termination of a pregnancy in an underage patient, without

9765-551: The scope of brute-force attacks , so when specifying key lengths , the required key lengths are similarly advancing. The potential impact of quantum computing are already being considered by some cryptographic system designers developing post-quantum cryptography. The announced imminence of small implementations of these machines may be making the need for preemptive caution rather more than merely speculative. Claude Shannon 's two papers, his 1948 paper on information theory , and especially his 1949 paper on cryptography, laid

9870-410: The sender and receiver share the same key (or, less commonly, in which their keys are different, but related in an easily computable way). This was the only kind of encryption publicly known until June 1976. Symmetric key ciphers are implemented as either block ciphers or stream ciphers . A block cipher enciphers input in blocks of plaintext as opposed to individual characters, the input form used by

9975-402: The sharing of information would be guided by ETHIC Model: Examining professional values, after thinking about ethical standards of the certifying association, hypothesize about different courses of action and possible consequences, identifying how it and to whom will it be beneficial per professional standards, and after consulting with supervisor and colleagues. Confidentiality principle bolsters

10080-412: The techniques used in most block ciphers, especially with typical key sizes. As a result, public-key cryptosystems are commonly hybrid cryptosystems , in which a fast high-quality symmetric-key encryption algorithm is used for the message itself, while the relevant symmetric key is sent with the message, but encrypted using a public-key algorithm. Similarly, hybrid signature schemes are often used, in which

10185-508: The traffic and then forward it to the recipient. Also important, often overwhelmingly so, are mistakes (generally in the design or use of one of the protocols involved). Cryptanalysis of symmetric-key ciphers typically involves looking for attacks against the block ciphers or stream ciphers that are more efficient than any attack that could be against a perfect cipher. For example, a simple brute force attack against DES requires one known plaintext and 2 decryptions, trying approximately half of

10290-431: The use of cryptography is legal, laws permit investigators to compel the disclosure of encryption keys for documents relevant to an investigation. Cryptography also plays a major role in digital rights management and copyright infringement disputes with regard to digital media . The first use of the term "cryptograph" (as opposed to " cryptogram ") dates back to the 19th century—originating from " The Gold-Bug ",

10395-525: Was a message tattooed on a slave's shaved head and concealed under the regrown hair. Other steganography methods involve 'hiding in plain sight,' such as using a music cipher to disguise an encrypted message within a regular piece of sheet music. More modern examples of steganography include the use of invisible ink , microdots , and digital watermarks to conceal information. In India, the 2000-year-old Kama Sutra of Vātsyāyana speaks of two different kinds of ciphers called Kautiliyam and Mulavediya. In

10500-542: Was finally won in 1978 by Ronald Rivest , Adi Shamir , and Len Adleman , whose solution has since become known as the RSA algorithm . The Diffie–Hellman and RSA algorithms , in addition to being the first publicly known examples of high-quality public-key algorithms, have been among the most widely used. Other asymmetric-key algorithms include the Cramer–Shoup cryptosystem , ElGamal encryption , and various elliptic curve techniques . A document published in 1997 by

10605-499: Was first published about ten years later by Friedrich Kasiski . Although frequency analysis can be a powerful and general technique against many ciphers, encryption has still often been effective in practice, as many a would-be cryptanalyst was unaware of the technique. Breaking a message without using frequency analysis essentially required knowledge of the cipher used and perhaps of the key involved, thus making espionage, bribery, burglary, defection, etc., more attractive approaches to

10710-488: Was indeed possible by presenting the Diffie–Hellman key exchange protocol, a solution that is now widely used in secure communications to allow two parties to secretly agree on a shared encryption key . The X.509 standard defines the most commonly used format for public key certificates . Diffie and Hellman's publication sparked widespread academic efforts in finding a practical public-key encryption system. This race

10815-570: Was new and significant. Computer use has thus supplanted linguistic cryptography, both for cipher design and cryptanalysis. Many computer ciphers can be characterized by their operation on binary bit sequences (sometimes in groups or blocks), unlike classical and mechanical schemes, which generally manipulate traditional characters (i.e., letters and digits) directly. However, computers have also assisted cryptanalysis, which has compensated to some extent for increased cipher complexity. Nonetheless, good modern ciphers have stayed ahead of cryptanalysis; it

10920-518: Was probably the first automatic cipher device , a wheel that implemented a partial realization of his invention. In the Vigenère cipher , a polyalphabetic cipher , encryption uses a key word , which controls letter substitution depending on which letter of the key word is used. In the mid-19th century Charles Babbage showed that the Vigenère cipher was vulnerable to Kasiski examination , but this

11025-533: Was the Caesar cipher , in which each letter in the plaintext was replaced by a letter three positions further down the alphabet. Suetonius reports that Julius Caesar used it with a shift of three to communicate with his generals. Atbash is an example of an early Hebrew cipher. The earliest known use of cryptography is some carved ciphertext on stone in Egypt ( c.  1900 BCE ), but this may have been done for

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