Editing 1323: Protocol
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==Explanation== | ==Explanation== | ||
| − | {{w|Alice_and_Bob|Alice, Bob, and Eve}} are role names traditionally used in describing cryptographic protocols. Rather than talking about "Person A", "Person B", "Person C", names beginning with each letter are used instead, and giving them different genders let pronouns be used to shorten discussions. For example: "Person A sends Person B a message encoded with Person B's public key" is much easier to parse when written as "Alice sends Bob a message encoded with his public key." Eve is short for "eavesdropper" - a person trying to find out what's being said in the conversations between the other people. The classic situation involves Alice wanting to send a secret message to Bob, while Eve (the eavesdropper), attempts to read the message, ideally without Alice or Bob ever finding out. Additional participants such as Carol (Person C) can be added if necessary. The list of names has become very | + | {{w|Alice_and_Bob|Alice, Bob, and Eve}} are role names traditionally used in describing cryptographic protocols. Rather than talking about "Person A", "Person B", "Person C", names beginning with each letter are used instead, and giving them different genders let pronouns be used to shorten discussions. For example: "Person A sends Person B a message encoded with Person B's public key" is much easier to parse when written as "Alice sends Bob a message encoded with his public key." Eve is short for "eavesdropper" - a person trying to find out what's being said in the conversations between the other people. The classic situation involves Alice wanting to send a secret message to Bob, while Eve (the eavesdropper), attempts to read the message, ideally without Alice or Bob ever finding out. Additional participants such as Carol (Person C) can be added if necessary. The list of names has become very standardised over time as described at {{w|Alice and Bob}}. |
The joke here is that any computer scientist, hearing the names used, will think that they are listening to a cryptography problem. By changing the names in a story to these role names, you can induce them to listen carefully to boring stories. The fewer the interesting details, the more it sounds like a general problem, so very boring stories are actually the easiest. | The joke here is that any computer scientist, hearing the names used, will think that they are listening to a cryptography problem. By changing the names in a story to these role names, you can induce them to listen carefully to boring stories. The fewer the interesting details, the more it sounds like a general problem, so very boring stories are actually the easiest. | ||
