Score:4

What is "entropic security"?

cn flag

I've come across a form of cryptographic security that I've never heard of: entropic security. I've read the Russel et al abstract and that doesn't seem to bear much relation to the wiki article.

Things that confuse me are like:-

"Deterministic encryption" :A deterministic encryption scheme (as opposed to a probabilistic encryption scheme) is a cryptosystem which always produces the same ciphertext for a given plaintext and key, even over separate executions of the encryption algorithm.

That mode seems highly redundant as any 'proper' scheme would produce new cipher texts for repetitions of the same message (replay attack vs IVs?).

So what's entropic security for dummies, and how does the above fit in? I realise that Wikipedia is not the font of all knowledge.

forest avatar
vn flag
You're asking two questions at once. There are a number of answers here which explain what deterministic encryption is, and it's not a bad thing anymore than a block cipher is a bad thing. Also, it's not just you. That Wikipedia article is awful and is very confusing.
fgrieu avatar
ng flag
Yevgeniy Dodis and Adam Smith's [_Entropic Security and the Encryption of High Entropy Messages_](https://eprint.iacr.org/2004/219.pdf) seems to contain all the necessary information. This comment is not a proper answer, and one I drafted was worse than nothing, so I'll leave this to others.
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