Talk:One-way encryption

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[edit] Google book search

To understand how the term "one way encryption" is used, I've done a search over 100 books that appear first on a Google book search. The result is of course not 100% reliable, because in many cases there is only a limited preview available, and often it is necessary to guess how the authors actually define the term. Since the categories are somewhat overlapping, I've tried to find a best fit. Other readers would probably get somewhat different results. However, I hope the list is still helpful:

  • In 29 cases "one-way encryption" is described as the process used for securing password storage, I.e by hashing or by using a oneway function such as the old DES-base UNIX crypt.
  • 10 cases use "one-way encryption" as a synonym for cryptographic hash function.
  • 9 cases use is as synonym for one-way function.
  • In 9 more cases "one-way encryption" stands for either cryptographic hash function or one-way function. I.e. it was not possible to make a decision because the term was not clearly defined or defined in a part of the book not shown during the book search.
  • 10 cases use the definition by E. Fujisaki and T. Okamoto - Advances in Cryptology–CRYPTO, 1999, i.e an asymmetric encryption scheme that has certain properties.
  • 10 cases refer to trapdoor one-way functions.
  • 6 cases use the term "one-way encryption" to define what a cryptographic hash function is.
  • 2 cases refer to protocols where e.g. only messages from client to server (but not server to client) are encrypted.
  • In 12 cases the preview did not contain the term "one way encryption" or did not use it in any context (e.g. when only the index of the book was available).
  • 3 cases were gibberish.

Obviously, there exists some considerable confusion about how the term is used. Making a simple list of potential replacements is not helpful to a reader, specially in the cases (such as asymmetric encryption) where one-way encryption is not a synonym. The definition by Fujisaki and Okamoto is the only well defined use of the term "one-way encryption". The article should make clear that in this case "one-way encryption" is not a synonym to asymmetric encryption. Rather "one-way encryption" is a subset with certain properties. Since "one-way encryption" is frequently used for describing secure password storage and early implementations in Unix were based on DES, this may explain why the term is encryption is slightly abused for functions that are not invertible. 85.2.24.67 20:42, 7 August 2007 (UTC)