Cryptosystem

• Everything you basically need to implement encryption  

• You'll pick some method to generate a key

• One key will enrypt

• One key will decrypt 

Plaintext or cleartext

• Data before it is encrypted ​

• Example "Meet me at 3PM" 

Ciphertext

• Data after it is encrypted

• Example "@:L#jk09'PFIJ093jf"

Algorithm

• The mathmatical ​calculations required to turn plaintext into ciphertext 

Encrypt

• Change from plaintext to ciphertext​

Decrypt

• Change from ciphertext to plaintext​

Work factor

• The amount of time it takes to break an algorithm​

• The amount of time it takes to figure out an encryption key

Key

• For each algorithm used, there is a key 

• The keys are the ones that make each ciphertext unique

• The keys to an algorithm is what hackers will try to get

• Can be symmetric or asymmetric ​

• Each key should ALWAYS generate a different set of ciphertext if used on the same plaintext

Keyspace

• The amount of 1's and 0's that can be used to create a key​

Key clustering

• When the same ciphertext is generated from the same plaintext​

• This is NOT good

• You want every key to have a unique ciphertext output 

Initialization Vector

• Sometimes patterns are created if the same keyspace or keys are used over and over again.  ​

• An IV injects a small random number to eliminate any patterns 

• Used in DES-CBC mode

Salt

• Kind of like an initialization vector​

• Used for increasing the randomness and unpredictability of ciphertext