Talk:Key (cryptography)

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Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

40px This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 14 January 2021 and 30 April 2021. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Devinr-usc, Nhoang82, Sachenfrank.

{{small|Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 01:45, 17 January 2022 (UTC)}}

''Key'' article ''secrecy'' section vs. ''[[Secret_key]]'' redirect

The Secret key article redirects here. However, the subject of secrecy is dicussed here without really differentiating (well) the concept of secret keys (symmetric all secret) vs. public/private keys (asymmetric part secret). So perhaps the secret key article can be split out on its own (no more redirect), or it can be treated as a part of this article. Poppafuze 21:12, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

Opinions are solicited here:

  • No preference Poppafuze 21:12, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

List of applications

Hmm..not quite sure if this article is the right place for this...it's true that these protocols use keys, but I don't think it's sufficiently noteworthy for this topic. Perhaps we should move it to Cryptographic protocol ? — Matt 15:45, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)

:I agree. This part should probably contain a simple link to Cryptographic protocol, especially since it seems it was created in the first place to advertise PGP :) ClementSeveillac 16:20, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Major Edit

I've attempted a major cleanup and dropped some redundant text. I shortend the discussion of key length and pointed readers to the full article. I am also deleting "If a key can be guessed, an attacker is likely to be able to break the entire cryptosystem. For example, the poor choice of using related keys for the Japanese PURPLE cipher machine during World War II made it much easier for American analysts to continue to break encoded traffic after their initial breakthrough." It really does not affect modern systems much, particularly given the assumption that "the system is known". More work neded, but ran out of time for now. --agr 15:40, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)

: Thanks, I've also hacked on the lead section a little, and I think the article is looking quite a lot better than it did on the 15th. But yes, still more to do, I think. — Matt 06:40, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Key vs Password

I came here as part of trying to understand 1Password's articles on how its various keys and passwords work. I realized that for most non-specialists (like me), one thing that's missing from a lot of relevant discussions is a simple explanation of why we have the two different words of "key" and "password" -- i.e. because they do not always (or even often?) refer to the same concept. I was going to merely make a suggestion here, but I decided to be bold and have a go myself. I am not a crypto person though, so could someone who is please check what I wrote, and add/subtract/modify as needed, just bearing in mind that the intended audience is more likely to be like me (crypto-naive) than you (crypto-sophisticated) and so lucidity may be more of a priority than absolutely bomb-proof technical precision! :-) Thanks. Thomask0 (talk) 20:13, 16 April 2016 (UTC)