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Cybersecurity Glossary

Welcome to the Cybersecurity Glossary!
This glossary provides clear, concise definitions of key cybersecurity terms to support your learning in the CYB program. Each entry includes examples, visual aids, and interactive prompts to help you better understand complex concepts and apply them in real-world contexts. Use this resource whether you're reviewing for an assessment or brushing up on terminology during a project.

AES (Advanced Encryption Standard)

A U.S. government encryption standard supported by NIST. It uses a block length of 128 bits and key lengths of 128, 192, or 256 bits.

🔐Try This: Why do you think AES replaced DES as the encryption standard? What might make a cipher “stronger”?

Authentication

Verifying the integrity of a message or the identity of a user. Methods include passwords, digital certificates, smart cards, and biometrics.

💬 Example: Logging into a university portal using your username and password is authentication.

🔐 Interactive Prompt: What two forms of authentication could be used in a multi-factor system?

Block Level Data

Reading/writing data at the physical disk level by the disk controller.

🧠 Think: Why might attackers target block-level data rather than higher software layers?

Brute Force

Systematically testing all possible keys or methods to break a security system.

📊 Interactive Prompt: Estimate how long a brute force attack would take to break a 4-digit vs. 8-character password.

🔐 Quiz Me: What two factors influence the difficulty of a brute force attack?

Chosen Plaintext Attack

The attacker selects plaintexts to be encrypted and analyzes the resulting ciphertext to uncover the key.

💡 Ask Yourself: How is this more dangerous than a known plaintext attack?

Collision Resistance

A property of hash functions ensuring different inputs produce different outputs.

🎯 Visual Aid: Think of a vending machine where every coin combo gives a unique snack. A “collision” would mean different combos produce the same snack.

Cryptographic Modes

Methods and forms of cryptography, including symmetric/asymmetric encryption and hash functions.

🔎 Quiz Me: Name one mode used with AES and explain its purpose.

Data Integrity

Ensures data accuracy, completeness, and consistency. Prevents unauthorized data modification.

🧠 Think: Why is data integrity essential in healthcare or financial systems?

Data Protection

Procedures that keep data secure and accessible only to authorized users.

🔐 Interactive Prompt: What’s the difference between data protection and data privacy?

DES (Data Encryption Standard)

An older NIST-standard cipher using a 56-bit key. Replaced by AES in 2001.

🕒 Think: Why is 56-bit encryption no longer considered secure?

Differential Cryptanalysis Attack

Analyzes input differences to predict output patterns — a threat to block ciphers.

🔬 Try This: Why might substitution-permutation networks be more vulnerable to this than Feistel networks?

Diffie-Hellman

A secure method for exchanging keys over public channels. Based on exponentiation of shared numbers.

🔁 Visual Aid: Think of color mixing — each side adds their private “color” to a shared one, but only they know how to reverse it.

Digital Certificate

A digital ID used in public key encryption to authenticate identity.

🔐 Quiz Me: What organization issues digital certificates?

Digital Signature

An electronic equivalent of a signature that ensures data integrity and authenticity.

🧠 Think: Why might a digital signature be more secure than a typed name or scanned image?

DSA (Digital Signature Algorithm)

Used in the U.S. Digital Signature Standard. Less common than RSA.

💬 Example: You may see DSA used in government forms and secure email protocols.

ECC (Elliptic Curve Cryptography)

A public key method using elliptic curves for faster and more secure encryption.

📊 Visual Aid: ECC achieves the same strength as RSA with much smaller key sizes.

ElGamal

Asymmetric encryption using discrete logarithms. Also used for digital signatures.

💬 Interactive Prompt: What’s the tradeoff between ElGamal’s security and its processing speed?

FIPS 140 Series

Standards for the security of cryptographic modules in federal systems.

📑 Quiz Me: What kind of organizations must follow FIPS 140 standards? Why?

Hash Function

A function that converts data into a fixed-length hash, used for integrity checks.

🎯 Visual Aid: Think of a hash as a fingerprint for data — small, unique, and irreversible.

Key Management

Creation, exchange, and maintenance of cryptographic keys. Often involves public key systems.

🔐 Interactive Prompt: Why is key management essential in both symmetric and asymmetric encryption?

Known Plaintext Attack

Attacker has both ciphertext and its corresponding plaintext and tries to find the key.

💡 Try This: What makes this type of attack more dangerous when repeated over multiple messages?

Linear Cryptanalysis Attack

Uses known relationships in plaintext and ciphertext to break block ciphers.

📊 Think: Why would block cipher structure influence vulnerability to this attack?

MD4

A broken hash function developed for 32-bit computers. No longer secure.

🧠 Reflect: Why is it important to retire older cryptographic algorithms?

MD5

A popular but flawed hash function by Ronald Rivest. Used for message digests.

🔍 Quiz Me: What security flaw caused MD5 to fall out of favor for modern cryptographic use?

Non-Repudiation

Ensures that the sender of a message cannot deny sending it. Enabled by digital signatures.

📜 Think: How does this concept apply in legal, academic, or financial transactions?

Public Key Cryptography

Uses a public/private key pair for encryption and decryption.

🔁 Visual Aid: Public keys lock data, private keys unlock it — like a mailbox anyone can drop into, but only you can open.

Public Key Infrastructure (PKI)

A system that uses certificate authorities to issue and verify digital certificates.

🔐 Interactive Prompt: Why is trust in a certificate authority so critical?

RSA

Encrypts data with a recipient's public key; only decryptable by the private key.

💡 Try This: RSA is often used to send a key for another algorithm. Why not just encrypt all data with RSA?

SHA-1

A hashing algorithm used for digital signatures. More secure than MD5, but outdated.

📊 Quiz Me: What replaced SHA-1 for higher-security hashing?

SHA-2

An extension of SHA-1 offering longer hashes: 256 or 512 bits.

🔐 Visual Aid: Longer hashes are harder to crack — like using a stronger, longer password.

SHA-3

Released by NIST in 2015. Uses a new method called Keccak.

🔍 Interactive Prompt: Why do we need multiple hash standards like SHA-2 and SHA-3?

Streaming Data

Continuous data flow, such as video or audio transmissions.

📡 Think: What are the security implications of real-time data streams?

Symmetric Cryptography

Uses the same secret key for encryption and decryption. Secure key exchange is a challenge.

🔁 Try This: How can you safely send a shared key over an insecure network?

Twofish

An AES finalist that uses a 128-bit block cipher. Not selected but still respected.

💬 Example: Though not chosen as AES, Twofish is still used in tools like TrueCrypt.

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