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To decrypt the ciphertext, the recipient requires a secret knowledge from the sender, usually a string of letters, numbers, or bits, called a cryptographic key. The concept is that even if an unauthorized person gets access to the ciphertext during transmission, without the secret key they cannot convert it back to plaintext.
Public-key encryption was first described in a secret document in 1973; [14] beforehand, all encryption schemes were symmetric-key (also called private-key). [15]: 478 Although published subsequently, the work of Diffie and Hellman was published in a journal with a large readership, and the value of the methodology was explicitly described. [16]
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 the key needed for decryption of that message).
One example of deniable encryption is a cryptographic filesystem that employs a concept of abstract "layers", where each layer can be decrypted with a different encryption key. [ citation needed ] Additionally, special " chaff layers" are filled with random data in order to have plausible deniability of the existence of real layers and their ...
In an asymmetric key encryption scheme, anyone can encrypt messages using a public key, but only the holder of the paired private key can decrypt such a message. The security of the system depends on the secrecy of the private key, which must not become known to any other.
Crypto-shredding or crypto erase (cryptographic erasure) is the practice of rendering encrypted data unusable by deliberately deleting or overwriting the encryption keys: assuming the key is not later recovered and the encryption is not broken, the data should become irrecoverable, effectively permanently deleted or "shredded". [1]
Public-key cryptography—compute a ciphertext decodable with a different key used to encode (e.g., RSA) Digital signatures—confirm the author of a message; Mix network—pool communications from many users to anonymize what came from whom; Private information retrieval—get database information without server knowing which item was requested
Differential cryptanalysis is a general form of cryptanalysis applicable primarily to block ciphers, but also to stream ciphers and cryptographic hash functions. In the broadest sense, it is the study of how differences in information input can affect the resultant difference at the output.