USING MAPLETS IN TEACHING CRYPTOLOGY
Rick Klima, Neil P. Sigmon, W. Darrin Hall · 2013
When a cipher is used to exchange information, the undisguised information is called the plaintext, and the disguised information the ciphertext. The process of converting from plaintext to ciphertext is called encryption. Upon receiving a ciphertext, the recipient must remove the disguise, a process called decryption. To be able to effectively encrypt and decrypt messages, correspondents must typically share knowledge of a secret key, which is used in applying the cipher. More specifically, the key for a cipher is information usually known only to the originator and intended recipient of a message, which is used by the originator to encrypt the plaintext, and by the recipient to decrypt the ciphertext.