Encryption

One of the building blocks of security is encryption, which provides a means of scrambling data for secure transmission to other parties. In cryptographic terms, the data or message to be encrypted is referred to as plaintext, and the resulting encrypted block of text as ciphertext. A number of processes exist for converting plaintext into ciphertext through the use of keys, which are essentially random numbers of a specified length used to lock and unlock data. This conversion is achieved by applying the keys to the plaintext by following a set of mathematical instructions, referred to as the encryption algorithm.

Developing and analyzing strong encryption software is extremely difficult. There are many nuances and standards governing ...

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