Radio Frequency by Steve Winder and Joe Carr - HTML preview

12.5 Classification of security

Unconditionally secure

Those systems where the cryptanalyst has insufficient information to estimate the content of the cipher regardless of the amount of time and computation facilities available. This is only realistic when using what is known as a one-time pad where the key is used once and once only.

Computationally secure

Encryption systems are specified in terms of the amount of time taken by a cryptanalyst to estimate the cipher’s contents using the state of the art techniques. Unless an extremely long periodicity is used for a progressive key – months and even years in some instances – requiring many stages in the shift register, it is possible for a cryptanalyst who knows, or can estimate, a small part of the message to calculate all the parameters necessary to decipher the message. However, stream encryption with a pseudo-random key approaches perfect secrecy for a finite number of messages.