Cryptography - BLaCK BeaRD
A message is called either plaintext or cleartext. The process of
disguising a message in such
a way as to hide its substance is called
encryption. An encrypted message is called
ciphertext. The process
of turning ciphertext back into plaintext is called decryption.
The art and science of keeping messages secure is called cryptography,
and it is
practiced by cryptographers. Cryptanalysts are
practitioners of cryptanalysis, the art and
science of breaking
ciphertext, i.e. seeing through the disguise. The branch of
mathematics embodying both cryptography and cryptanalysis is called
cryptology, and it’s
practitioners are called cryptologists.
PGP uses public-key encryption to protect
E-mail and data files.
Communicate securely with people you’ve never met, with no secure
channels needed for prior exchange of keys. PGP is well featured and
fast, with sophisticated
key management, digital signatures, data
compression, and good ergonomic design.
Pretty Good Privacy (PGP), from Phil’s Pretty Good Software, is a
high security cryptographic
software application for MS-DOS, Unix,
VAX/VMS, and other computers. PGP allows people to
exchange files or
messages with privacy, authentication, and convenience. Privacy means
that only those intended to receive a message can read it.
Authentication means that messages
that appear to be from a particular
person can only have originated from that person.
Convenience means
that privacy and authentication are provided without the hassles of
managing keys associated with conventional cryptographic software. No
secure channels are
needed to exchange keys between users, which makes
PGP much easier to use. This is because PGP
is based on a powerful
new technology called "public key" cryptography.
PGP combines the convenience of the Rivest-Shamir-Adleman (RSA)
public key cryptosystem with
the speed of conventional cryptography,
message digests for digital signatures, data
compression before
encryption, good ergonomic design, and sophisticated key management.
And PGP performs the public-key functions faster than most other
software implementations. PGP
is public key cryptography for the
masses.
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