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Cryptology is the discipline of cryptography and cryptanalysis and of their interaction. Its aim is secrecy or confidentiality: the practice of keeping secrets, maintaining privacy, or concealing valuables. A further goal of cryptology is integrity and authenticity, usually given by a message authentication code (see MAC algorithms) or digital signature unique to the sender and serving for his identification.

  • Cryptography: the discipline of writing a message in ciphertext (see cryptosystem), usually by a translation from plaintext according to some (frequently changing) keytext, with the aim of protecting a secret from adversaries, interceptors, intruders, interlopers, eavesdroppers, opponents or simply attackers, opponents, enemies. Professional cryptography protects not only the plaintext, but also the key and more generally tries to protect the whole cryptosystem.

  • Steganography: counterpart of cryptography, comprising technical steganography (working with invisible inks and hollow...

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  1. Bauer, F.L. (1997). “Decrypted secrets.” Methods and Maxims of Cryptology. Springer-Verlag, Berlin.

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© 2005 International Federation for Information Processing

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Bauer, F.L. (2005). Cryptology. In: van Tilborg, H.C.A. (eds) Encyclopedia of Cryptography and Security. Springer, Boston, MA . https://doi.org/10.1007/0-387-23483-7_89

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