What is Cryptology
Cryptology, science concerned with data communication and storage in secure and usually secret form. It encompasses both cryptography and cryptanalysis.
The term cryptology is
derived from the Greek kryptós (“hidden”)
and lógos (“word”).
Security obtains from legitimate users
being able to transform information by
virtue of a secret key or keys—i.e., information known only to them. The
resulting cipher,
although generally inscrutable and not forgeable without the secret key, can be
decrypted by anyone knowing the key either to recover the hidden information or
to authenticate the source. Secrecy, though still an important function in
cryptology, is often no longer the main purpose of using a transformation, and
the resulting transformation may be only loosely considered a cipher.
Cryptography (from the Greek kryptós and gráphein, “to write”) was originally the study of the
principles and techniques by which information could be concealed in ciphers
and later revealed by legitimate users employing the secret key. It now
encompasses the whole area of key-controlled transformations of information
into forms that are either impossible or computationally infeasible for
unauthorized persons to duplicate or undo.
Cryptanalysis (from the
Greek kryptós and analýein, “to
loosen” or “to untie”) is the science (and art) of recovering or forging
cryptographically secured information without knowledge of the key. Cryptology
is often—and mistakenly—considered a synonym for cryptography and occasionally
for cryptanalysis, but specialists in the field have for years adopted the
convention that cryptology is the more inclusive term, encompassing both cryptography and cryptanalysis.
Cryptography was initially
only concerned with providing secrecy for written messages, especially in times
of war. Its principles apply equally well, however, to securing data flowing
between computers or data stored in them, to encrypting facsimile and
television signals, to verifying the identity of participants in electronic
commerce (e-commerce) and providing legally acceptable records of those
transactions. Because of this broadened interpretation of cryptography, the
field of cryptanalysis has also been enlarged.
This article discusses the
basic elements of cryptology, delineating the principal systems and techniques of cryptography as
well as the general types and procedures of cryptanalysis. It also provides a
concise historical survey of the development of cryptosystems and
cryptodevices. A brief introduction is also given to the revolution in
cryptology brought on by the information age, e-commerce, and the Internet. For
additional information on the encoding and encryption of facsimile and
television signals and of computer data, seetelecommunications system and information processing.
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