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Re: Word needed for Entropy

daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Bill Frantz)
Mon Jun 28 17:21:51 1999

In-Reply-To: <37750098.65F2A11D@acm.org>
Date: Sun, 27 Jun 1999 19:17:57 -0700
To: Carl Ellison <cme@acm.org>, cryptography@c2.net
From: Bill Frantz <frantz@netcom.com>

At 9:32 AM -0700 6/26/99, 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."
>
>In casual language, I might call this "undiscoverability", but it's
>far too large a word.

I use unguessability, not much shorter.


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Bill Frantz | The availability and use of secure encryption may         |
Periwinkle  | offer an opportunity to reclaim some portion of           |
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