Three Dimensions of Cryptographic Systems

•The type of operations used for transforming plaintext to ciphertext.

–All encryption algorithms are based on two general principles:

•Substitution: each element in the plaintext is mapped into another element, and

•Transposition: elements in the plaintext are rearranged.

–The fundamental requirement is that no information be lost (that is, that all operations are reversible).

–Most systems involve multiple stages of substitutions and transpositions.

•The number of keys used.

–If both sender and receiver use the same key, the system is referred to as symmetric, single-key, secret-key, or conventional encryption.

–If the sender and receiver use different keys, the system is referred to as asymmetric, two-key, or public-key encryption.

•The way in which the plaintext is processed.

–A block cipher processes the input one block of elements at a time, producing an output block for each input block.

–A stream cipher processes the input elements continuously, producing output one element at a time, as it goes along.