Key managementKey management refers to management of cryptographic keys in a cryptosystem. This includes dealing with the generation, exchange, storage, use, crypto-shredding (destruction) and replacement of keys. It includes cryptographic protocol design, key servers, user procedures, and other relevant protocols. Key management concerns keys at the user level, either between users or systems. This is in contrast to key scheduling, which typically refers to the internal handling of keys within the operation of a cipher.
Shared secretIn cryptography, a shared secret is a piece of data, known only to the parties involved, in a secure communication. This usually refers to the key of a symmetric cryptosystem. The shared secret can be a password, a passphrase, a big number, or an array of randomly chosen bytes. The shared secret is either shared beforehand between the communicating parties, in which case it can also be called a pre-shared key, or it is created at the start of the communication session by using a key-agreement protocol, for instance using public-key cryptography such as Diffie–Hellman or using symmetric-key cryptography such as Kerberos.
Quantum cryptographyQuantum cryptography is the science of exploiting quantum mechanical properties to perform cryptographic tasks. The best known example of quantum cryptography is quantum key distribution which offers an information-theoretically secure solution to the key exchange problem. The advantage of quantum cryptography lies in the fact that it allows the completion of various cryptographic tasks that are proven or conjectured to be impossible using only classical (i.e. non-quantum) communication.
Key exchangeKey exchange (also key establishment) is a method in cryptography by which cryptographic keys are exchanged between two parties, allowing use of a cryptographic algorithm. If the sender and receiver wish to exchange encrypted messages, each must be equipped to encrypt messages to be sent and decrypt messages received. The nature of the equipping they require depends on the encryption technique they might use. If they use a code, both will require a copy of the same codebook. If they use a cipher, they will need appropriate keys.
Payment systemA payment system is any system used to settle financial transactions through the transfer of monetary value. This includes the institutions, payment instruments such as payment cards, people, rules, procedures, standards, and technologies that make its exchange possible. A common type of payment system, called an operational network, links bank accounts and provides for monetary exchange using bank deposits. Some payment systems also include credit mechanisms, which are essentially a different aspect of payment.
E-commerce payment systemAn e-commerce payment system (or an electronic payment system) facilitates the acceptance of electronic payment for offline transfer, also known as a subcomponent of electronic data interchange (EDI), e-commerce payment systems have become increasingly popular due to the widespread use of the internet-based shopping and banking. Credit cards remain the most common forms of payment for e-commerce transactions. As of 2008, in North America, almost 90% of online retail transactions were made with this payment type.
Secure multi-party computationSecure multi-party computation (also known as secure computation, multi-party computation (MPC) or privacy-preserving computation) is a subfield of cryptography with the goal of creating methods for parties to jointly compute a function over their inputs while keeping those inputs private. Unlike traditional cryptographic tasks, where cryptography assures security and integrity of communication or storage and the adversary is outside the system of participants (an eavesdropper on the sender and receiver), the cryptography in this model protects participants' privacy from each other.
Pre-shared keyIn cryptography, a pre-shared key (PSK) is a shared secret which was previously shared between the two parties using some secure channel before it needs to be used. To build a key from shared secret, the key derivation function is typically used. Such systems almost always use symmetric key cryptographic algorithms. The term PSK is used in Wi-Fi encryption such as Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP), Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA), where the method is called WPA-PSK or WPA2-PSK, and also in the Extensible Authentication Protocol (EAP), where it is known as EAP-PSK.
Formal methodsIn computer science, formal methods are mathematically rigorous techniques for the specification, development, analysis, and verification of software and hardware systems. The use of formal methods for software and hardware design is motivated by the expectation that, as in other engineering disciplines, performing appropriate mathematical analysis can contribute to the reliability and robustness of a design.
Table of costs of operations in elliptic curvesElliptic curve cryptography is a popular form of public key encryption that is based on the mathematical theory of elliptic curves. Points on an elliptic curve can be added and form a group under this addition operation. This article describes the computational costs for this group addition and certain related operations that are used in elliptic curve cryptography algorithms. The next section presents a table of all the time-costs of some of the possible operations in elliptic curves.
