"If I take a letter, lock it in a safe somewhere in New York, then tell you to read the letter, that's not security. That's obscurity. On the other hand, if I take a letter and lock it in a safe, and give you the safe along with the design specifications of the safe and a hundred identical safes with"
"And don't forget Kerchhoffs' assumption: If the strength of your new cryptosystem relies on the fact that the attackers does not know the algorithm's inner workings, you're sunk. If you believe that keeping the algorithm's insides secret improves the security of your cryptosystem more than letting t"
"There are many cryptographic algorithms. These are three of the most common: - DES (Data Encryption Standard) is the most popular computer encryption algorithm. DES is a U.S. and international standard. It is a symmetric algorithm; the same key is used for encryption and decryption. - RSA (named for"
"Random-number generators are not random because they don't have to be. Most simple applications, like computer games, need so few random numbers that they hardly notice. However, cryptography is extremely sensitive to the properties of random-number generators. ... Of course, it is impossible to pro"
"Factoring large numbers is hard. Unfortunately for algorithm designers, it is getting easier. Even worse, it is getting easier faster than mathematicians expected. In 1976 Richard Guy wrote: “I shall be surprised if anyone regularly factors numbers of size 10^80 without special form during the prese"