CRYPTOGRAPHY PRINCIPLES
(Section by Carlene Turner)
Terminology
- Plaintext – an unencrypted message
- Cyphertext – an encrypted message
- Security: a combination of
- Authentication
- Access control
The SANS Institute outline the following principles of cryptography (Jiang, 2003).
- Confidentiality: The prevention of unauthorized disclosure of information.
- Integrity: The prevention of erroneous modification of information.
- Availability: The prevention of unauthorized withholding of information or resources.
- Authentication: The process of verifying that users are who they claim to be when logging onto a system.
- Authorization: The process of allowing only authorized users access to sensitive information.
- Privacy ensures that the only the sender and intended recipient of an encrypted message can read the contents of the message that are transmitted from one place to another and cannot be understood by any intermediate parties that may have intercepted the data stream.
- Non-repudiation provides a method to guarantee that a party to a transaction cannot falsely claim that they did not participate in that transaction.