[Nottingham] Can't remember the term for a cryptographic technique...

[Joshua Lock]

On Wed, May 28, 2008 at 9:25 AM, Danny King <dannyking at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> A bit off topic so I apologise in advance:
>
> At the last meeting I was having a conversation with a few people and
> we briefly touched on cryptography, specifically a certain area of it.
> I can't for the life of me remember the term used to describe the
> practice of encrypting a message so that two separate keys provide
> different plaintexts when used on the same cyphertext i.e.:
>
> Alice creates a cyphertext from her secret message and gives Bob key1
> and Fred key2. Bob uses key1 to decode the true message whilst Fred
> uses key2 on the same cyphertext to decode a different but still
> conceivable message.
>
> Can anyone help me to remember the name of this practice? I've been
> googling and wikipeding for an hour with no success!

Hmm, not sure. Sounds a bit like it could be Steganography? What with
the hidden messages and all.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganography

- J

-- 
Joshua Lock
incandescant at gmail.com