Decipherment

Decryption and deciphering or decoding describes in a broader sense, the declaration or interpretation of unknown characters, icons, images, notices or other artifacts or their conversion into known characters.

There can be different reasons for different decryption:

• The technical application of standardized (known) encoding method.
• It is only in front of an unknown encoding or language the author has but want to hide any information.
• Any transfer, use or modification of data that would be inhibited by the author.
• Disclosure of the information or message by persons other than the addressees desired by the author.

In most applications of computer science is not the deciphering of unknown encodings in the foreground, but there are encryption and decryption for technical functions, as used for data compression or conversion of different character sets.

Decryption in cryptology

In a narrow sense, especially in cryptology, the decryption of the process in which a previously encrypted by encryption text (often called ciphertext ) using a decoding method and the key is turned back into the plaintext. Linguistically, it is clean between the encryption and decryption on the one hand and the deciphering of the other hand.

Accordingly, the decryption is the authorized activities of the legitimate receiver who is in possession of the key and thus wins the plaintext from the ciphertext; deciphering however, is the (usually unauthorized ) activity of a crypto analyst who is trying to learn the message content without knowing the key and uses it cryptanalytic methods.

Decryption in archeology

The term decoding is used in archeology for the interpretation or translation of unknown writing systems and character.

Decryption and Copyright

Current attained the significance of the decryption in the context of circumvention of copy protection or other mechanisms of firms to protect the copyright of multimedia content (such as CDs, DVDs and Pay TV ) was established. For this purpose, in particular cryptographic method called encryption method used.

Legal situation in Germany

Called " circumvention devices " in common usage - - With the introduction of § 95a under an amendment to the German copyright law ( Copyright Act) a few years ago the use of was the technical means by which a right owner -installed copy protection can be bypassed, prohibited, at least in principle ( § 95a, Section 1 of the German Copyright Act ).