Advanced Encryption Standard. Symmetric encryption algorithm specified by NIST in FIPS 197. As the result of a public evaluation, AES was declared the official encryption standard in the year 2001. It [..]

The term authentication is used to describe a procedure used by the participants of a communication in order to prove to each other that their participation is legitimate. An example for an authentica [..]

Certification Authority. Within a PKI, the CA is responsible for issuing digital certificates. See also: wikipedia: Certificate Authority

Digital proof that a certain public key (see asymmetric encryption) belongs to a specified entity, e.g. a person or organization. Certificates are usually issued by a trusted third party, a so-called [..]

Certificate Revocation List. Blacklist with the serial numbers of revoked certificates. A CRL is usually generated by a CA and then published. It refers to certificates issued by this CA.

Federal Information Processing Standards. Series of publications edited by NIST which US industrial norms concerning information processing and information security are specified. Further information [..]

A hash algorithm resp. a hash function maps blocks of data of arbitrary length to blocks of a fixed length. The result of a hash algorithm using a cryptographic hash function is also called a digital [..]

In encryption technology, the bit length of a cryptographic key indicates the size of the so-called key space. The key space of an encryption algorithm with key length n consists of 2n cryptographic k [..]

National Institute for Standards and Technology. US American institute responsible for defining industrial standards, comparable to the German DIN institute.

Public Key Cryptography Standard. Series of publications edited by RSA Labs in which standards for the usage of asymmetric cryptography techniques are specified. The series is available on the Interne [..]