In cryptographic terminology, the message is called plaintext or cleartext.

Encoding the contents of the message in such a way that hides its contents from outsiders is called encryption. The encrypted message is called the ciphertext. The process of retrieving the plaintext from the ciphertext is called decryption. Encryption and decryption usually make use of a key, and the coding method is such that decryption can be performed only by knowing the proper key. Cryptography is the art or science of keeping messages secret. Cryptanalysis is the art of breaking ciphers, i.e. retrieving the plaintext without knowing the proper key. People who do cryptography are cryptographers, and practitioners of cryptanalysis are cryptanalysts. Cryptography deals with all aspects of secure messaging, authentication, digital signatures, electronic money, and other applications. Cryptology is the branch of mathematics that studies the mathematical foundations of cryptographic methods. A method of encryption and decryption is called a cipher. Some cryptographic methods rely on the secrecy of the algorithms; such algorithms are only of historical interest and are not adequate for real-world needs. All modern algorithms use a key to control encryption and decryption; a message can be decrypted only if the key matches the encryption key. There are two classes of key-based encryption algorithms, symmetric (or secret-key) and asymmetric (or public-key) algorithms. The difference is that symmetric algorithms use the same key for encryption and decryption (or the decryption key is easily derived from the encryption key), whereas asymmetric algorithms use a different key for encryption and decryption, and the decryption key cannot be derived from the encryption key. Generally, symmetric algorithms are much faster to execute on a computer than asymmetric ones. In practice they are often used together, so that a publickey algorithm is used to encrypt a randomly generated encryption key, and the random key is used to encrypt the actual message using a symmetric algorithm. This is sometimes called hybrid encryption. public-key algorithms can be used to generate digital signatures. A digital signature is a small amount of data that was created using some secret key, and there is a public key that can be used to verify that the signature was really generated using the corresponding private key. The algorithm used to generate the signature must be such that without knowing the secret key it is not possible to create a signature that would verify as valid. An example of a secret key type algorithm is the ceasar encryption, it takes a letter from the cleartext and then counts four spots down of the alphabet and replaces it. Like ''A'' would become ''F'' An example of a public key type algorithm is PGP the encryption and decryption is based on a specific key. Digital signatures are used to verify that a message really comes from the claimed sender (assuming only the sender knows the secret key corresponding to his/her public key). They can also be used to timestamp documents: a trusted party signs the document and its timestamp with his/her secret key, thus testifying that the document existed at the stated time. Cryptographic random number generators generate random numbers for use in cryptographic applications, such as for keys. Conventional random number generators available in most programming languages or programming environments are not suitable for use in cryptographic applications (they are designed for statistical randomness, not to resist prediction by cryptanalysts).

In the optimal case, random numbers are based on true physical sources of randomness that cannot be predicted. Such sources may include the noise from a semiconductor device, the least significant bits of an audio input, or the intervals between device interrupts or user keystrokes. The noise obtained from a physical source is then "distilled" by a cryptographic hash function to make every bit depend on every other bit. Quite often a large pool (several thousand bits) is used to contain randomness, and every bit of the pool is made to depend on every bit of input noise and every other bit of the pool in a cryptographically strong way. When true physical randomness is not available, pseudo-random numbers must be used. This situation is undesirable, but often arises on general purpose computers. It is always desirable to obtain some environmental noise - even from device latencies, resource utilization statistics, network statistics, keyboard interrupts, or whatever. The point is that the data must be unpredictable for any external observer; to achieve this, the random pool must contain at least 128 bits of true entropy. Of course people (mean people) want to break an and BruteForce it. BruteForce is systematically if you have a six-digit number, you could crack it at 000001 then 000002 then 000003 on the way key. encryption so they could try try every key. This means that the key by starting guessing to 999999 till you get the

You can brute force a key of two digits in your head. Get a friend to think of a two-digit number, and not tell you. Easy to guess, right? There are only 99 numbers it could possibly be, so you count down the list till you guess the right one. Now tell your friend to add just one more teensy little digit, so they have a secret number with three digits. Now there are 999 possible numbers it could be. See? 999 may only have one more digit than 99, but it''s more than ten times bigger. It gets ten times harder each time you add a digit. You can still try to guess it, but how high do you feel like counting? With modern keys of 4096 bits, there''s just more intelligent method of cracking a large key cryptanalyst. And if a key can weak. brute forcing takes near forever and ways of doing it. This is why the brute force is the very last resort of any smart ever be brute forced, that means it''s really

Timestamp
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Timestamp can refer to a time code or to a digitally signed timestamp whose signer vouches for the existence of the signed document or content at the time given as part of the digital signature. Timestamps are very useful for logging events.
Examples 2005-10-30 10:45 Sat Jul 23 02:16:57 2005

Many sources also use the term timestamp to refer specifically to Unix time, the number of seconds since 00:00:00 UTC on January 1, 1970.

History
The idea of timestamping information is actually centuries old. For example, when Robert Hooke discovered Hooke's law in 1660, he did not want to publish it yet, but wanted to be able to claim priority. So he published the anagram ceiiinosssttuv and later published the translation ut tensio sic vis (Latin for "as is the extension, so is the force"). Similarly, Galileo first published his discovery of the phases of Venus in the anagram form. A modern example is the case of an industrial research organization that may later need to prove, for patent purposes, that they made a particular discovery on a particular date; since magnetic media can be altered easily, this may be a nontrivial issue. One possible solution is for a researcher to compute and record in a hardcopy laboratory notebook a cryptographic hash of the relevant data file. In the future, should there be a need to prove the version of this file retrieved from a backup tape has not been altered, the hash function could be recomputed and compared with the hash value recorded in that paper notebook.

Trusted (Digital) Timestamping

Getting a timestamp from a trusted third party. Trusted timestamping is the process of securely keeping track of the creation and modification time of a document. Security here means that no onenot even the owner of the documentshould be able to change it once it has been recorded provided that the timestamper's integrity is never compromised. The administrative aspect involves setting up a publicly available, trusted timestamp management infrastructure to collect, process and renew timestamps. A trusted timestamp is a timestamp issued by a trusted third party (TTP) acting as a timestamping authority (TSA). It is used to prove the existence of certain data before a certain point (e.g. contracts, research data, medical records,...) without the possibility that the owner can backdate the timestamps. Multiple TSAs can be used to increase reliability and reduce vulnerability. Creating a timestamp The technique is based on digital signatures and hash functions. First a hash is calculated from the data. A hash is a sort of digital fingerprint of the original data: a string of bits that is different for each set of data. If the original data is changed then this will result in a completely different hash. This hash is sent to the TSA. The TSA concatenates a timestamp to the hash and calculates the hash of this concatenation. This hash is in turn digitally signed with the private key of the TSA. This signed hash + the timestamp is sent back to the requester of the timestamp who stores these with the original data (see diagram). Since the original data can not be calculated from the hash (because the hash function is a one way function), the TSA never gets to see the original data, which allows the use of this method for confidential data. Simple solution used in previous times was to post sensitive data via official state post service to your own address, since post stamp is an official time-stamp recognized in court. Checking the timestamp

Checking correctness of a timestamp generated by a time stamping authority (TSA). Anyone trusting the timestamper can then verify that the document was not created after the date that the timestamper vouches. It can also no longer be repudiated that the requester of the timestamp was in possession of the original data at the time given by the timestamp. To prove this (see diagram) the hash of the original data is calculated, the timestamp given by the TSA is appended to it and the hash of the result of this concatenation is calculated, call this hash A. Then the digital signature of the TSA is to be checked by decrypting the signed hash given by the TSA with the public key of the TSA. This results in the decrypted hash, let us call this hash B. If hash A equals hash B then the timestamp is unaltered and was issued by the TSA. If not, then either the timestamp was altered or the timestamp was not issued by the TSA.