Block cipherIn cryptography, a block cipher is a deterministic algorithm that operates on fixed-length groups of bits, called blocks. Block ciphers are the elementary building blocks of many cryptographic protocols. They are ubiquitous in the storage and exchange of data, where such data is secured and authenticated via encryption. A block cipher uses blocks as an unvarying transformation. Even a secure block cipher is suitable for the encryption of only a single block of data at a time, using a fixed key.
CiphertextIn cryptography, ciphertext or cyphertext is the result of encryption performed on plaintext using an algorithm, called a cipher. 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. This process prevents the loss of sensitive information via hacking. Decryption, the inverse of encryption, is the process of turning ciphertext into readable plaintext.
Chosen-ciphertext attackA chosen-ciphertext attack (CCA) is an attack model for cryptanalysis where the cryptanalyst can gather information by obtaining the decryptions of chosen ciphertexts. From these pieces of information the adversary can attempt to recover the hidden secret key used for decryption. For formal definitions of security against chosen-ciphertext attacks, see for example: Michael Luby and Mihir Bellare et al. A number of otherwise secure schemes can be defeated under chosen-ciphertext attack.
Running key cipherIn classical cryptography, the running key cipher is a type of polyalphabetic substitution cipher in which a text, typically from a book, is used to provide a very long keystream. Usually, the book to be used would be agreed ahead of time, while the passage to be used would be chosen randomly for each message and secretly indicated somewhere in the message. The text used is The C Programming Language (1978 edition), and the tabula recta is the tableau. The plaintext is "Flee at once".
Stream cipherA stream cipher is a symmetric key cipher where plaintext digits are combined with a pseudorandom cipher digit stream (keystream). In a stream cipher, each plaintext digit is encrypted one at a time with the corresponding digit of the keystream, to give a digit of the ciphertext stream. Since encryption of each digit is dependent on the current state of the cipher, it is also known as state cipher. In practice, a digit is typically a bit and the combining operation is an exclusive-or (XOR).
Book cipherA book cipher is a cipher in which each word or letter in the plaintext of a message is replaced by some code that locates it in another text, the key. A simple version of such a cipher would use a specific book as the key, and would replace each word of the plaintext by a number that gives the position where that word occurs in that book. For example, if the chosen key is H. G. Wells's novel The War of the Worlds, the plaintext "all plans failed, coming back tomorrow" could be encoded as "335 219 881, 5600 853 9315" — since the 335th word of the novel is "all", the 219th is "plans", etc.
Caesar cipherIn cryptography, a Caesar cipher, also known as Caesar's cipher, the shift cipher, Caesar's code, or Caesar shift, is one of the simplest and most widely known encryption techniques. It is a type of substitution cipher in which each letter in the plaintext is replaced by a letter some fixed number of positions down the alphabet. For example, with a left shift of 3, would be replaced by , would become , and so on. The method is named after Julius Caesar, who used it in his private correspondence.
XOR cipherIn cryptography, the simple XOR cipher is a type of additive cipher, an encryption algorithm that operates according to the principles: A 0 = A, A A = 0, A B = B A, (A B) C = A (B C), (B A) A = B 0 = B, For example where denotes the exclusive disjunction (XOR) operation. This operation is sometimes called modulus 2 addition (or subtraction, which is identical). With this logic, a string of text can be encrypted by applying the bitwise XOR operator to every character using a given key.
One-way compression functionIn cryptography, a one-way compression function is a function that transforms two fixed-length inputs into a fixed-length output. The transformation is "one-way", meaning that it is difficult given a particular output to compute inputs which compress to that output. One-way compression functions are not related to conventional data compression algorithms, which instead can be inverted exactly (lossless compression) or approximately (lossy compression) to the original data.
Linear differential equationIn mathematics, a linear differential equation is a differential equation that is defined by a linear polynomial in the unknown function and its derivatives, that is an equation of the form where a0(x), ..., an(x) and b(x) are arbitrary differentiable functions that do not need to be linear, and y′, ..., y(n) are the successive derivatives of an unknown function y of the variable x. Such an equation is an ordinary differential equation (ODE).