Dictionary of Information Security

to provide. In some cases, this would be conversion

of ciphertext to plaintext, but in other cases, it might

involve forging of digital signatures or certificates.The

basic cryptanalytic attacks on encryption systems are

ciphertext-only, known-plaintext, chosen-plaintext, and

chosen-ciphertext; and these generalize to the other

kinds of cryptography. See also cryptology.

crypto formerly widely used as an abbreviation for cryptog-

raphy, cryptographic, cryptology, or even encryption, this

term probably should not be used because of the

potential for misunderstanding

cryptographic algorithm well-defined procedure or

sequence of rules or steps used to produce a key

stream or ciphertext from plaintext, and vice versa.

Older usage is crypto-algorithm.

cryptographic ...