Problem: Suppose Grean wants to send a message to Brandon in a form that another person cannot find out the original information from intercepting the message. The message that Grean wants to send is referred to as the "cleartext" or "plaintext" Ideal Solution: To assure the secrecy of the message, Grean converts the cleartext into an "encrypted message" or "ciphertext". When Brandon receives the message, he decrypts the encrypted message and retrieves the cleartext. Even if another person has access to the encrypted message or has somehow intercepted it, she/he cannot find the cleartext. Plaintext - Original "readable" file, text to be encoded for secrecy Ciphertext - "Disguised" file, short ciphertext is sometimes called a "cryptogram" Encryption - Any procedure to convert plaintext into ciphertext Decryption - The process of decoding ciphertext back into plaintext Copyright 1997 by Slackers Union. Comments should go to any of the group members. Opinions reflected on this page are by no means opinions of UCSD. Go sue somebody else. Last Modified: June 1, 1997 |