Information about Cleartext
In data communications, cleartext is the form of a message or data which is in a form that is immediately comprehensible to a human being without additional processing. A good early reference is to this is ISO/IEC7498-2, Information Processing Systems--Open Systems
Interconnection Reference Model--Part 2: Security Architecture.
In particular, it implies that this message is transferred or stored without cryptographic protection. The phrases, "in clear" and "in the clear" are equivalent. For example, "The keys in the Foo protocol are exchanged as cleartext." would mean that the keys are not encrypted during transmission.
It is related to, but not entirely equivalent to, the term "plaintext". Formally, plaintext is information that is fed as an input to a cryptographic process, while ciphertext is what comes out of that process. Plaintext might be compressed, encrypted, or otherwise manipulated before the cryptographic process is applied, so it is quite common to find plaintext that is not cleartext.
Cleartext material is sometimes in plain text form, meaning a sequence of characters without formatting, but this is not strictly required as the sense is 'no protection from snooping'. Thus, "The form letter we wrote is stored on your disk in cleartext, that is -- in Microsoft Word format without encryption. And so is the email I sent -- that's in plain text (i.e., ASCII) form."
The reason this is an important distinction is that not all cryptographic processes are equal -- the standard example is encryption via rot13. In modern environments, many of the symmetric encryption processes using smaller keys are now considered to be as readily converted to cleartext as encryption via rot13. Consequently, the first consideration should not be how "secure" a particular encryption process is, just whether or not any process is used.
An example of cleartext transmission is this website. When you log into your Wikipedia account (if you are not an administrator) your username and password are sent from your computer through the internet via cleartext. Anyone with access to the medium used to carry the data (the routers, computers, telecommunications equipment, wireless transmissions, etc.) may read your password, username, and anything else you transmit to the website.
In particular, it implies that this message is transferred or stored without cryptographic protection. The phrases, "in clear" and "in the clear" are equivalent. For example, "The keys in the Foo protocol are exchanged as cleartext." would mean that the keys are not encrypted during transmission.
It is related to, but not entirely equivalent to, the term "plaintext". Formally, plaintext is information that is fed as an input to a cryptographic process, while ciphertext is what comes out of that process. Plaintext might be compressed, encrypted, or otherwise manipulated before the cryptographic process is applied, so it is quite common to find plaintext that is not cleartext.
Cleartext material is sometimes in plain text form, meaning a sequence of characters without formatting, but this is not strictly required as the sense is 'no protection from snooping'. Thus, "The form letter we wrote is stored on your disk in cleartext, that is -- in Microsoft Word format without encryption. And so is the email I sent -- that's in plain text (i.e., ASCII) form."
The reason this is an important distinction is that not all cryptographic processes are equal -- the standard example is encryption via rot13. In modern environments, many of the symmetric encryption processes using smaller keys are now considered to be as readily converted to cleartext as encryption via rot13. Consequently, the first consideration should not be how "secure" a particular encryption process is, just whether or not any process is used.
An example of cleartext transmission is this website. When you log into your Wikipedia account (if you are not an administrator) your username and password are sent from your computer through the internet via cleartext. Anyone with access to the medium used to carry the data (the routers, computers, telecommunications equipment, wireless transmissions, etc.) may read your password, username, and anything else you transmit to the website.
See also
Computer networking is the engineering discipline concerned with communication between computer systems or devices. Networking, routers, routing protocols, and networking over the public Internet have their specifications defined in documents called RFCs.
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Cryptography (or cryptology; derived from Greek κρυπτός kryptós "hidden," and the verb γράφω gráfo "write" or λεγειν legein
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Foo is a metasyntactic variable used heavily in computer science to represent concepts abstractly and can be used to represent any part of a complicated system or idea including the data, variables, functions, and commands.
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A security protocol (cryptographic protocol or encryption protocol) is an abstract or concrete protocol that performs a security-related function and applies cryptographic methods.
A protocol describes how the algorithms should be used.
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A protocol describes how the algorithms should be used.
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In telecommunications, transmission is the forwarding of signal traffic over distances that are too great to be simply connected by a twisted pair wires. Techniques available now may be microwave link, satellite link, coaxial cable or fibre optic cable.
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plaintext is information used as input to an encryption algorithm; the output is termed ciphertext. The plaintext could be, for example, a diplomatic message, a bank transaction, an e-mail, a diary and so forth — any information that someone might want to prevent
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plaintext is information used as input to an encryption algorithm; the output is termed ciphertext. The plaintext could be, for example, a diplomatic message, a bank transaction, an e-mail, a diary and so forth — any information that someone might want to prevent
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encryption is the process of transforming information (referred to as plaintext) to make it unreadable to anyone except those possessing special knowledge, usually referred to as a key.
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plaintext is information used as input to an encryption algorithm; the output is termed ciphertext. The plaintext could be, for example, a diplomatic message, a bank transaction, an e-mail, a diary and so forth — any information that someone might want to prevent
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plain text is textual material in a computer file which is unformatted and without very much processing readable by simple computer tools such as line printing text commands, in Windows'es DOS window
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type, and in Unix terminal window cat...... Click the link for more information.
Microsoft Word is Microsoft's flagship word processing software. It was first released in 1983 under the name Multi-Tool Word for Xenix systems.[1] Versions were later written for several other platforms including IBM PCs running DOS (1983), the Apple Macintosh
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plain text is textual material in a computer file which is unformatted and without very much processing readable by simple computer tools such as line printing text commands, in Windows'es DOS window
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type, and in Unix terminal window cat...... Click the link for more information.
American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII), generally pronounced ask-ee IPA: /ˈæski/ ( [1] ), is a character encoding based on the English alphabet.
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ROT13 ("rotate by 13 places", sometimes hyphenated ROT-13) is a simple Caesar cipher used in online forums as a means of hiding spoilers, punchlines, puzzle solutions, and offensive materials from the casual glance.
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ROT13 ("rotate by 13 places", sometimes hyphenated ROT-13) is a simple Caesar cipher used in online forums as a means of hiding spoilers, punchlines, puzzle solutions, and offensive materials from the casual glance.
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User in a computing context refers to one who uses a computer system. Users may need to identify themselves for the purposes of accounting, security, logging and resource management.
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A password is a form of secret authentication data that is used to control access to a resource. The password is kept secret from those not allowed access, and those wishing to gain access are tested on whether or not they know the password and are granted or denied access
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router is a device that extracts the destination of a packet it receives, selects the best path to that destination, and forwards data packets to the next device along this path.[1] They connect networks together; a LAN to a WAN for example, to access the Internet.
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computer is a machine which manipulates data according to a list of instructions.
Computers take numerous physical forms. The first devices that resemble modern computers date to the mid-20th century (around 1940 - 1941), although the computer concept and various machines
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Computers take numerous physical forms. The first devices that resemble modern computers date to the mid-20th century (around 1940 - 1941), although the computer concept and various machines
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Telecommunication is the transmission of signals over a distance for the purpose of communication. In modern times, this process typically involves the sending of electromagnetic waves by electronic transmitters, but in earlier times telecommunication may have involved the use of
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wireless is normally used to refer to any type of electrical or electronic operation which is accomplished without the use of a "hard wired" connection. Wireless communication is the transfer of information
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plaintext is information used as input to an encryption algorithm; the output is termed ciphertext. The plaintext could be, for example, a diplomatic message, a bank transaction, an e-mail, a diary and so forth — any information that someone might want to prevent
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plain text is textual material in a computer file which is unformatted and without very much processing readable by simple computer tools such as line printing text commands, in Windows'es DOS window
..... Click the link for more information.
type, and in Unix terminal window cat...... Click the link for more information.
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