Dictionary of Information Security

symmetric key encryption symmetric key encryption,

otherwise known as private key encryption, uses the

same, private, key for encryption and decryption, the

key being shared between the two parties to the

communication. Symmetric key systems do not

require a public key infrastructure, as does asymmetric

key encryption, but do require key exchange via a

secure channel.

SYN flood denial of service attack that sends a host more

TCP SYN packets (request to synchronize sequence

numbers, used when opening a connection) than

the protocol implementation can handle

system boot record on ISA or Wintel computers the first

logical (not physical) sector of the master hard drive,

or the first physical sector on a floppy diskette.The

programming in the system boot recor ...