[4995] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Word needed for Entropy
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Carl Ellison)
Sat Jun 26 13:22:05 1999
Date: Sat, 26 Jun 1999 09:32:24 -0700
From: Carl Ellison <cme@acm.org>
To: cryptography@c2.net
I've been guilty of sloppy use of English, occasionally, and one such
sloppiness that I run into occasionally is with the word "entropy"
for cryptographic purposes.
What we need is a word or very short phrase to capture the full
phrase:
"the conditional entropy of a measurement given all the information about the
measurement that an attacker is expected to acquire, under the threat model for
which the present use is being designed."
In casual language, I might call this "undiscoverability", but it's
far too large a word.
- Carl
--
Carl M. Ellison cme@alum.mit.edu http://www.pobox.com/~cme
PGP: E0414C79B5AF36750217BC1A57386478 & 61E2DE7FCB9D7984E9C8048BA63221A2
``Officer, officer, arrest that man! He's whistling a dirty song.''
[Jean Ellison]
