Kerckhoffs' Principle
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Jean-Guillame-Hubert-Victor-Francois-Alexandre-Auguste Kerckhoffs von Niewenhof, whose full name might make a start at a minimally strong polyalphabetic key, was usually known as Auguste Kerckhoffs.[1] In his 1883 book, La Cryptographie Militaire, he stated six axioms of cryptography.[2] Some are no longer relevant given the ability of computers to perform complex encryption, but the second is the most critical, and, perhaps, counterintuitive:
| “ | If the method of encipherment becomes known to one's adversary, this should not prevent one from continuing to use the cipher as long as the key remains unknown | ” |
- ↑ Kahn, David (second edition, 1996), The Codebreakers: the story of secret writing, Scribners p.235
- ↑ Savard, John J. G., The Ideal Cipher, A Cryptographic Compendium