Talk:Key

From iA wiki

In modern cryptography a key is used to encrypt information. For example if you type your password, the password is encrypted. The system then checks if that encrypted password is the same as the one stated in the password file (or shadow, or whatever Windows is using, the concept is the same). Early implementations of this system decrypted the password stated in the password file and checked wether it was the same as what was typed in. This method was vulnerable to attacks since it costs far less CPU time to decrypt a password than it costs to encrypt one. Because for every password you encrypt you crunch CPU time. This concept is also called "one-way encryption" IIRC. The fact that in early UNIX systems the password file was world-readible by users too was yet another design flaw solved in modern UNIX and UNIX-like systems. --dpi