stuart@rochester.UUCP (Stuart Friedberg) (03/13/86)
In article <12305@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> Matthew P. Wiener writes: > In article <12284@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> Tom Tedrick writes: > >(By the way I hate the word "cryptology". I have never been > >able to get used to it. I grew up with the word "cryptography" > > Too bad, Tom. That's been the correct terminology for quite a long > time and has all the force of correct etymology behind it. I'll look Gentlemen, gentlemen, please! Cryptology is NOT the same as cryptography. Cryptography is a very specialized, and advanced, subfield of cryptology. Cryptology is the field of communications security. Cryptography is the field of codes and ciphers. Physical security, speech privacy systems, traffic analysis, and navigational beacon deception ("meaconing") are four sample cryptologic topics that do not involve cryptography. I was employed for five years as a "cryptologic linguist". My duties had little, if anything, to do with "cryptography". The distinction between cryptography and cryptology is current (circa 1982) and official (US DoD definitions for official publications). Stuart Friedberg {seismo, allegra}!rochester!stuart stuart@rochester Former member of Field Station Augsburg, 6913 ESS, 6941 ESS, and NSA A311.
weemba@brahms.BERKELEY.EDU (Matthew P. Wiener) (03/16/86)
In article <16098@rochester.UUCP> stuart@rochester.UUCP (Stuart Friedberg) writes: >In article <12305@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> Matthew P. Wiener writes: >>In article <12284@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> Tom Tedrick writes: >>>(By the way I hate the word "cryptology". I have never been >>>able to get used to it. I grew up with the word "cryptography" >> >>Too bad, Tom. That's been the correct terminology for quite a long >>time and has all the force of correct etymology behind it. I'll look > >Cryptology is NOT the same as cryptography. > >Cryptography is a very specialized, and advanced, subfield of cryptology. > >Cryptology is the field of communications security. >Cryptography is the field of codes and ciphers. > >Physical security, speech privacy systems, traffic analysis, and >navigational beacon deception ("meaconing") are four sample cryptologic >topics that do not involve cryptography. > >I was employed for five years as a "cryptologic linguist". My duties >had little, if anything, to do with "cryptography". > >The distinction between cryptography and cryptology is current (circa >1982) and official (US DoD definitions for official publications). Within the world of codes and ciphers, cryptology refers to the general science/art, and cryptography to the specialized subfield of designing secure systems. In this sense cryptology has even been considered a branch of applied mathematics. Besides, US DoD definitions are not always relevant to reality. They call themselves "Department of DEFENSE", for example. Back to Tom's question, the words themselves are very old. By the middle of the seventeenth century, "cryptography" meant "secrecy in writing", "cryptology" meant "secrecy in speech" and "cryptomeneses" meant the general study of communication security in general. In this sense, "cryptology" was a virtually non-existent field until the mid-twentieth century. Cryptography was used in the general sense until the early part of this century. But this was possible without any confusion because cryptanalysis was such an unknown field. When William Friedman began in the 1920's writing his Riverbank publications, he invented the term "cryptanalysis" for the study of techniques of breaking of codes, and used the term "cryptography" for his publications not on cryptanalysis, ie, his suggestions for how to design cipher machines and the like. So William Friedman effectively redefined the word "cryptography" by his writings. ucbvax!brahms!weemba Matthew P Wiener/UCB Math Dept/Berkeley CA 94720
tedrick@ernie.berkeley.edu (Tom Tedrick) (03/16/86)
>Besides, US DoD definitions are not always relevant to reality. They >call themselves "Department of DEFENSE", for example. Yes, I was going to make a similar point. Actually, no self-respecting Berkeley mathematician would dare admit taking the DoD seriously :-) > [ ... ] In this sense, >"cryptology" was a virtually non-existent field until the mid-twentieth >century. Cryptography was used in the general sense until the early >part of this century. But this was possible without any confusion >because cryptanalysis was such an unknown field. That explains it. I never liked the 20th century much :-) Most of my reading was centered around earlier periods. I gave up hope for civilization when Bismarck was booted out of office :-)