[5011] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: Word needed for Entropy
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Matt Crawford)
Mon Jun 28 17:21:50 1999
To: cryptography@c2.net
From: "Matt Crawford" <crawdad@fnal.gov>
In-reply-to: Your message of Sat, 26 Jun 1999 11:45:38 PDT.
<37751FD2.2370A855@nma.com>
Date: Mon, 28 Jun 1999 10:30:40 -0500
As some sort of a physicist, I the way the word entropy is used in
crypto does not bother me at all. It corresponds well with the
statistical mechanics definition of entropy as a measure of the
number of microstates of a system which correspond to the same
macrostate -- for example, the number of ways a given amount of
energy can be distributed among the molecules.
But
> "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."
contains a phrase "conditional entropy" that means nothing at all to
me, and generally goes "thud" upon the ear.
Matt Crawford
