An extension of the Shannon theory approach to cryptography
Martin E. Hellman · IEEE Transactions on Information Theory · 1977
Shannon's information-theoretic approach to cryptography is reviewed and extended. It is shown that Shannon's random cipher model is conservative in that a randomly chosen cipher is essentially the worst possible. This is in contrast with error-correcting codes where a randomly chosen code is essentially the best possible. The concepts of matching a cipher to a language and of the trade-off between local and global uncertainty are also developed.