Cryptanalysis

3 definitions found

From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:

  cryptanalysis \crypt"a*nal"y*sis\, n.
     1. the science which studies methods to discovering the
        secret meaning of encrypted messages for which one does
        not possess the secret decoding information (called the
        {key}).
        [PJC]


  
     2. the methods and procedures used to discover the secret
        meaning hidden in encrypted messages.
        [PJC] Cryptic

From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:

  cryptanalysis
       n : the science of analyzing and deciphering codes and ciphers
           and cryptograms [syn: {cryptanalytics}, {cryptography}, {cryptology}]

From The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (27 SEP 03) [foldoc]:

  cryptanalysis
       
          The branch of {cryptography} concerned with decoding encrypted
          messages when you're not supposed to be able to.
       
          (1994-12-06)