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In cryptography, ciphertext or cyphertext is the result of encryption performed on plaintext using an algorithm, called a cipher. [1] Ciphertext is also known as encrypted or encoded information because it contains a form of the original plaintext that is unreadable by a human or computer without the proper cipher to decrypt it.
The ciphertext message contains all the information of the plaintext message, but is not in a format readable by a human or computer without the proper mechanism to decrypt it. The operation of a cipher usually depends on a piece of auxiliary information, called a key (or, in traditional NSA parlance, a cryptovariable ).
Padding a message's payload before encrypting it can help obscure the cleartext's true length, at the cost of increasing the ciphertext's size and introducing or increasing bandwidth overhead. Messages may be padded randomly or deterministically , with each approach having different tradeoffs.
This can be achieved, for instance, through the utilization of the chi-squared statistic [22] or by minimizing the sum of squared errors between the observed and known language distributions. [23] The unicity distance for the Caesar cipher is about 2, meaning that on average at least two characters of ciphertext are required to determine the ...
The length of the grid's last line is given by the remainder. The key is written above the grid, and the ciphertext is written down the columns of the grid in the order given by the letters of the key. The plaintext appears on the rows. A partial decipherment of the above ciphertext, after writing in the first column: 6 3 2 4 1 5 . . . . E ...
There are many software products which provide encryption. Software encryption uses a cipher to obscure the content into ciphertext. One way to classify this type of software is the type of cipher used. Ciphers can be divided into two categories: public key ciphers (also known as asymmetric ciphers), and symmetric key ciphers. [4]
The meaning of "format" varies. Typically only finite sets of characters are used; numeric, alphabetic or alphanumeric. For example: Encrypting a 16-digit credit card number so that the ciphertext is another 16-digit number. Encrypting an English word so that the ciphertext is another English word.
Partially solved (all 4 ciphertexts solved between 1985 and 1986, but the solution to the 4th ciphertext has since been lost) [2] 1987 Decipher III: Unsolved [2] 1990 Kryptos: Partially solved (3 out of the 4 ciphertexts solved between 1992 and 1999) 1991 Scorpion ciphers [3] Unsolved 1999 Ricky McCormick's encrypted notes: Unsolved 2006