[5010] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: Word needed for Entropy
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (bram)
Mon Jun 28 17:20:14 1999
Date: Sat, 26 Jun 1999 13:03:03 -0700 (PDT)
From: bram <bram@gawth.com>
To: Carl Ellison <cme@acm.org>
Cc: cryptography@c2.net
In-Reply-To: <37750098.65F2A11D@acm.org>
On Sat, 26 Jun 1999, Carl Ellison wrote:
> 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."
I just say 'entropy' - it's generally obvious that I mean it in a
cryptographic sense, rather than a physics sense.
-Bram
