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Security Terms
Terms used when dealing with
encryption may be a little confusing. They are terms frequently used when
discussing cryptography. We picked the most important ones and defined them for
you here.
| TERM | DEFINITION |
| Cipher | Any technique, method, or scheme (XOR, substitution, transposition, etc.) used to encrypt and decrypt text, |
| without regard to its linguistic structure. | |
| Cipher Block Chaining (CBC) | Provides an exclusive or encryption layer underneath DES that chains the encryption of the unencrypted data from |
| one 64 bit block to the next. | |
| Ciphertext | The unintelligible text, after encrypting it. |
| Cryptanalysis | The solving or breaking of codes without knowledge of the key. |
| Cryptography | The general study of hiding the meaning of messages and the general techniques used for the hiding. |
| Data Encryption Standard (DES) | DES is basically a substitution cipher using a 64 bit block of your data and a 64 bit key. |
| Decrypting | The process of decoding an encrypted or ciphertext file to regain the original information. |
| Encrypting | The process of encoding a plaintext file to hide the original information. |
| Exclusive Or (XOR) | This is an encryption technique that uses logic computer operations to manipulate the data at the bit level. |
| Key | The text used to encrypt or decrypt a file. Sometimes called a code word or password. Keys can be simple |
| everyday words or very complex combinations of characters that have no meaning. Example keys: abc1234, | |
| Never:Again, and Buy Bonds. | |
| Plaintext | The unencrypted or decrypted, readable text. |
| Substitution | Substitution is one of the simplest encryption techniques. It creates a new order for the characters. |
| Transposition | An encryption technique that changes the natural order of data so that a different order for the characters is used. It |
| swaps characters within a message to place them in a different order based on the encryption key (text string) you | |
| use for encryption. | |