From the course: Symmetric Cryptography Essential Training

Basic terminology

From the course: Symmetric Cryptography Essential Training

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Basic terminology

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- [Instructor] You don't have to be a programmer to benefit from this course, however we will be using a few simple C++ programs to demonstrate some principles. I've included source code for these simple programs, so if you are a developer, you can refer to that code if you want to dig in. There are a few terms I want to go over before we get started. The overall field we'll be working in is called cryptology. This is the combination of two subfields, cryptography and cryptanalysis. Cryptography is a subfield of computer science and mathematics that's concerned with keeping data secure. We'll focus most of our time on this topic and in particular how we can keep messages confidential. Cryptanalysis is the study of breaking the systems of cryptography, including retrieving confidential messages, even when we shouldn't be able to. Encryption is transforming a message we want to make confidential into a scrambled form only readable by those with the key. Decryption is transforming an encrypted message back into its original readable form, using the same key, in symmetric cryptography, anyways. Lastly, I'll use the term cipher and cryptosystem fairly interchangeably to mean a well-defined process for doing encryption and decryption. If you have access to the exercise files, I've included a short glossary of important terms. I'll introduce these concepts throughout the course, but if at any point you can't recall what something means, feel free to refer to that glossary for a quick reminder.

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