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The Importance of Entropy to Information Security

Published

Author(s)

Apostol T. Vassilev, Timothy Hall

Abstract

The strength of cryptographic keys is an active challenge in academic research and industrial practice. In this paper we discuss the entropy as fundamentally important concept for generating hard-to-guess, i.e., strong, cryptographic keys and outline the difficulties in generating and estimating the available entropy for cryptographic needs. We consider traditional entropy estimation in cryptographic applications and motivate the development of new spectral techniques for estimation.
Citation
Computer (IEEE Computer)
Volume
47
Issue
2

Keywords

Cryptography, entropy, randomness, security

Citation

Vassilev, A. and Hall, T. (2014), The Importance of Entropy to Information Security, Computer (IEEE Computer), [online], https://doi.org/10.1109/MC.2014.47 (Accessed October 9, 2025)

Issues

If you have any questions about this publication or are having problems accessing it, please contact [email protected].

Created February 3, 2014, Updated November 10, 2018
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