If the disk encryption hardware is integrated with the media itself the media may be designed for better integration. One example of such design would be through the use of physical sectors slightly larger than the logical sectors.

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Most full disk encryption schemes are vulnerable to a cold boot attack, whereby encryption keys can be stolen by cold-booting a machine already running an operating system, then dumping the contents of memory before the data disappears. The attack relies on the data remanence property of computer memory, whereby data bits can take up to several minutes to degrade after power has been removed.

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A hash function is any well-defined procedure or mathematical function which converts a large, possibly variable-sized amount of data into a small datum, usually a single integer that may serve as an index into an array.

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This requirement excludes hash functions that depend on external variable parameters, such as pseudo-random number generators that depend on the time of day. It also excludes functions that depend on the memory address of the object being hashed, if that address may change during processing (as may happen in systems that use certain methods of garbage collection), although sometimes rehashing of the item can be done.

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However, some checksums fare poorly in the avalanche test, which may be a concern in some applications. In particular, the popular CRC32 checksum provides only 16 bits (the higher half of the result) that are usable for hashing. Moreover, each bit of the input influences only one bit of the CRC32; so care must be taken to use all 32 bits when computing the hash from the checksum.

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Although several of the forms of EKE in this paper were later found to be flawed, the surviving, refined, and enhanced forms of EKE effectively make this the first method to amplify a shared password into a shared key, where the shared key may subsequently be used to provide a zero-knowledge password proof or other functions.

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In the most stringent password-only security models, there is no requirement for the user of the method to remember any secret or public data other than the password. Augmented PAKE is a variation applicable to client/server scenarios, in which an attacker must perform a successful brute-force attack in order to masquerade as the client using stolen server data.

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Although several of the first methods were flawed, the surviving and enhanced forms of EKE effectively amplify a shared password into a shared key, which can then be used for encryption and/or message authentication.

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Some use the terms cryptography and cryptology interchangeably in English, while others (including US military practice generally) use cryptography to refer specifically to the use and practice of cryptographic techniques and cryptology to refer to the combined study of cryptography and cryptanalysis.[3][4] English is more flexible than some other languages in which cryptology (done by cryptologists) is used in the second sense above. In the English Wikipedia the general term used is cryptography (done by cryptographers).

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More literacy, or opponent literacy, required actual cryptography. The main classical cipher types are transposition ciphers, which rearrange the order of letters in a message (e.g., 'hello world' becomes 'ehlol owrdl' in a trivially simple rearrangement scheme)An early substitution cipher was the Caesar cipher, in which each letter in the plaintext was replaced by a letter some fixed number of positions further down the alphabet.

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Ciphertexts produced by classical ciphers (and some modern ones) always reveal statistical information about the plaintext, which can often be used to break them. After the discovery of frequency analysis by the Arab mathematician and polymath, Al-Kindi (also known as Alkindus), in the 9th century, nearly all such ciphers became more or less readily breakable by an informed attacker. Such classical ciphers still enjoy popularity today, though mostly as puzzles (see cryptogram).

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He also invented what was probably the first automatic cipher device, a wheel which implemented a partial realization of his invention. In the polyalphabetic Vigenère cipher, encryption uses a key word, which controls letter substitution depending on which letter of the key word is used. In the mid 1800s Babbage showed that polyalphabetic ciphers of this type remained partially vulnerable to extended frequency analysis techniques

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Thus, computers supplanted linguistic cryptanalytic approaches. Many computer ciphers can be characterized by their operation on binary bit sequences (sometimes in groups or blocks), unlike classical and mechanical schemes, which generally manipulate traditional characters (i.e., letters and digits) directly. However, computers have also assisted cryptanalysis, which has compensated to some extent for increased cipher complexity.

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That internal state is initially set up using the secret key material. RC4 is a widely used stream cipher; see Category:Stream ciphers.[10] Block ciphers can be used as stream ciphers; see Block cipher modes of operation. Cryptographic hash functions are a third type of cryptographic algorithm. They take a message of any length as input, and output a short, fixed length hash which can be used in (for example) a digital signature.

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Because of the blinding process, the Bank is not able to associate R'' with R' or R, so it is unable to determine that Bob and Alice are doing business together, preserving the anonymity of the transaction. Alice unblinds R''' to generate the original value R, which she sends to Bob.

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Technically electronic or digital money is a representation, or a system of debits and credits, used to exchange value, within another system, or itself as a stand alone system, online or offline. Also sometimes the term electronic money is used to refer to the provider itself. A private currency may use gold to provide extra security, such as digital gold currency.

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Using cryptography, anonymous ecash was introduced by David Chaum. He used blind signatures to achieve unlinkability between withdrawal and spend transactions.[1] In cryptography, e-cash usually refers to anonymous e-cash. Depending on the properties of the payment transactions, one distinguishes between on-line and off-line e-cash. The first off-line e-cash system was proposed by Chaum and Naor.

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At the time Blowfish was released, many other designs were proprietary, encumbered by patents or were commercial/government secrets. Schneier has stated that, "Blowfish is unpatented, and will remain so in all countries. The algorithm is hereby placed in the public domain, and can be freely used by anyone."

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Another member of the DES team, Walter Tuchman, is quoted as saying, "We developed the DES algorithm entirely within IBM using IBMers. The NSA did not dictate a single wire!"[6] In contrast, a declassified NSA book on cryptologic history states:

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The first offerings were disappointing, so NSA began working on its own algorithm. Then Howard Rosenblum, deputy director for research and engineering, discovered that Walter Tuchman of IBM was working on a modification to Lucifer for general use. NSA gave Tuchman a clearance and brought him in to work jointly with the Agency on his Lucifer modification

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