Re: Best definition of cryptography

From: Anton Stiglic (stiglic_at_cs.mcgill.ca)
Date: 04/29/04 

Date: Thu, 29 Apr 2004 14:46:23 -0400

"David Wagner" <daw@taverner.cs.berkeley.edu> wrote in message
news:c6rg29$20db$3@agate.berkeley.edu...
> Anton Stiglic wrote:
> >"The science of providing secure communication over insecure
> > channels".
>
> That's seems like a nice definition to me. Rivest has also proposed a
> wording something like "the science of communication in the presence of
> an adversary", which I also like.

That's a nice one. It can nicely include stuff like zero-knowledge proofs,
where
your channel might be secure, but where one of the participants might be
trying
to cheat (proover trying to prove something it doesn't really know, or
verifier trying
to learn more information than what it needs to know). The adversary can
either
be affecting the channel (like "in" the channel, eavesdropping and MITM
stuff), or
can be at the other end of the channel (a participant in a protocol).

--Anton