cryptography faq overview archive name cryptography faq part last modified faq for sci crypt part overview this is the first of ten parts of the sci crypt faq the parts are mostly independent but you should read this part before the rest we don t have the time to send out missing parts by mail so don t ask notes such as kah refer to the reference list in the last part disclaimer this document is the product of the crypt cabal a secret society which serves the national secu uh no seriously we re the good guys and we ve done what we can to ensure the completeness and accuracy of this document but in a field of military and commercial importance like cryptography you have to expect that some people and organizations consider their interests more important than open scientific discussion trust only what you can verify firsthand and don t sue us many people have contributed to this faq in alphabetical order eric bach steve bellovin dan bernstein nelson bolyard carl ellison jim gillogly mike gleason doug gwyn luke o connor tony patti william setzer we apologize for any omissions if you have suggestions comments or criticism please let the current editors know by sending e mail to crypt comments math ncsu edu we don t assume that this faq is at all complete at this point archives sci crypt has been archived since october on cl next cl msu edu though these archives are available only to u s and canadian users please contact crypt comments math ncsu edu if you know of other archives the sections of this faq are available via anonymous ftp to rtfm mit edu as pub usenet news answers cryptography faq part xx the cryptography faq is posted to the newsgroups sci crypt sci answers and news answers every days table of contents overview net etiquette what groups are around what s a faq who am i why am i here do political discussions belong in sci crypt how do i present a new encryption scheme in sci crypt basic cryptology what is cryptology cryptography plaintext ciphertext encryption key what references can i start with to learn cryptology how does one go about cryptanalysis what is a brute force search and what is its cryptographic relevance what are some properties satisfied by every strong cryptosystem if a cryptosystem is theoretically unbreakable then is it guaranteed analysis proof in practice why are many people still using cryptosystems that are relatively easy to break mathematical cryptology in mathematical terms what is a private key cryptosystem what is an attack what s the advantage of formulating all this mathematically why is the one time pad secure what s a ciphertext only attack what s a known plaintext attack what s a chosen plaintext attack in mathematical terms what can you say about brute force attacks what s a key guessing attack what s entropy product ciphers what is a product cipher what makes a product cipher secure what are some group theoretic properties of product ciphers what can be proven about the security of a product cipher how are block ciphers used to encrypt data longer than the block size can symmetric block ciphers be used for message authentication what exactly is des what is triple des what is differential cryptanalysis how was nsa involved in the design of des is des available in software is des available in hardware can des be used to protect classified information what are ecb cbc cfb and ofb encryption public key cryptography what is public key cryptography what s rsa is rsa secure how fast can people factor numbers what about other public key cryptosystems digital signatures and hash functions what is a one way hash function what is the difference between public private secret shared etc what are md and md what is snefru technical miscellany how do i recover from lost passwords in wordperfect how do i break a vigenere repeated key cipher how do i send encrypted mail under unix pgp ripem pem is the unix crypt command secure how do i use compression with encryption is there an unbreakable cipher what does random mean in cryptography what is the unicity point a k a unicity distance what is key management and why is it important can i use pseudo random or chaotic numbers as a key stream what is the correct frequency list for english letters what is the enigma how do i shuffle cards can i foil s w pirates by encrypting my cd rom can you do automatic cryptanalysis of simple ciphers what is the coding system used by vcr other miscellany what is the national security agency nsa what are the us export regulations what is tempest what are the beale ciphers and are they a hoax what is the american cryptogram association and how do i get in touch is rsa patented what about the voynich manuscript references books on history and classical methods books on modern methods survey articles reference articles journals conference proceedings other how may one obtain copies of fips and ansi standards cited herein electronic sources rfcs available from ftprf related newsgroups
