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3.4 KiB
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22 lines
3.4 KiB
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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1" standalone="no"?>
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<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><head><title>Alice and Bob</title><link rel="stylesheet" href="../../jargon.css" type="text/css"/><meta name="generator" content="DocBook XSL Stylesheets V1.61.0"/><link rel="home" href="../index.html" title="The Jargon File"/><link rel="up" href="../A.html" title="A"/><link rel="previous" href="aliasing-bug.html" title="aliasing bug"/><link rel="next" href="All-hardware-sucks--all-software-sucks-.html" title="All hardware sucks, all software sucks."/></head><body><div class="navheader"><table width="100%" summary="Navigation header"><tr><th colspan="3" align="center">Alice and Bob</th></tr><tr><td width="20%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="aliasing-bug.html">Prev</a> </td><th width="60%" align="center">A</th><td width="20%" align="right"> <a accesskey="n" href="All-hardware-sucks--all-software-sucks-.html">Next</a></td></tr></table><hr/></div><dt><a id="Alice-and-Bob"/><dt xmlns="" id="Alice-and-Bob"><b>Alice and Bob</b>: <span xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" class="grammar">n.</span></dt></dt><dd><p> The archetypal individuals used as examples in discussions of
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cryptographic protocols. Originally, theorists would say something like:
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“<span class="quote">A communicates with someone who claims to be B, So to be sure, A
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tests that B knows a secret number K. So A sends to B a random number X. B
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then forms Y by encrypting X under key K and sends Y back to A</span>”
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Because this sort of thing is quite hard to follow, theorists stopped using
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the unadorned letters A and B to represent the main players and started
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calling them Alice and Bob. So now we say “<span class="quote">Alice communicates with
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someone claiming to be Bob, and to be sure, Alice tests that Bob knows a
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secret number K. Alice sends to Bob a random number X. Bob then forms Y by
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encrypting X under key K and sends Y back to Alice</span>”. A whole
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mythology rapidly grew up around the metasyntactic names; see <a href="http://www.conceptlabs.co.uk/alicebob.html" target="_top">http://www.conceptlabs.co.uk/alicebob.html</a>.</p></dd><dd><p>In Bruce Schneier's definitive introductory text <i class="citetitle">Applied
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Cryptography</i> (2nd ed., 1996, John Wiley & Sons, ISBN
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0-471-11709-9) he introduced a table of dramatis personae headed by Alice
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and Bob. Others include Carol (a participant in three- and four-party
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protocols), Dave (a participant in four-party protocols), Eve (an
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eavesdropper), Mallory (a malicious active attacker), Trent (a trusted
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arbitrator), Walter (a warden), Peggy (a prover) and Victor (a verifier).
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These names for roles are either already standard or, given the wide
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popularity of the book, may be expected to quickly become so.</p></dd><div class="navfooter"><hr/><table width="100%" summary="Navigation footer"><tr><td width="40%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="aliasing-bug.html">Prev</a> </td><td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="u" href="../A.html">Up</a></td><td width="40%" align="right"> <a accesskey="n" href="All-hardware-sucks--all-software-sucks-.html">Next</a></td></tr><tr><td width="40%" align="left" valign="top">aliasing bug </td><td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="h" href="../index.html">Home</a></td><td width="40%" align="right" valign="top"> All hardware sucks, all software sucks.</td></tr></table></div></body></html>
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