Filter
Top Products
Glossary 343
identification
A process through which one ascertains
the identity of another person or entity.
key
A string of bits used widely in
cryptography, allowing people to
encrypt and decrypt data; a key can be
used to perform other mathematical
operations as well. Given a cipher, a
key determines the mapping of the
plaintext to the ciphertext. See also
distributed key, private key, public
key, secret key, session key, shared
key, sub key, symmetric key, weak key.
key agreement
A process used by two or more parties to
agree upon a secret symmetric key.
key escrow
The process of having a third party hold
onto encryption keys.
key exchange
A process used by two more parties to
exchange keys in cryptosystems.
key expansion
A process that creates a larger key from
the original key.
key generation
The act of creating a key.
key management
The various processes that deal with the
creation, distribution, authentication,
and storage of keys.
key pair
The full key information in a public-key
cryptosystem, consisting of the public
key and private key.
key recovery
A special feature of a key management
scheme that allows messages to be
decrypted even if the original key is lost.
key schedule
An algorithm that generates the subkeys
in a block cipher.
key space
The collection of all possible keys for a
given cryptosystem. See also flat key
space, linear key space, nonlinear key
space, and reduced key space.
Message Authentication Code (MAC)
A MAC is a function that takes a
variable length input and a key to
produce a fixed-length output. See also
hash-based MAC, stream-cipher based
MAC, and block-cipher based MAC.
message digest
The result of applying a hash function to
a message.
MIME
Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions.
MIPS
Millions of Instructions Per Second. A
measurement of computing speed.