Alice and Bob

In cryptography, Alice and Bob are fictional characters commonly used as placeholders in discussions about cryptographic protocols or systems, and in other science and engineering literature where there are several participants in a thought experiment. The Alice and Bob characters were invented by Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir and Leonard Adleman in their 1978 paper "A Method for Obtaining Digital Signatures and Public-key Cryptosystems". Subsequently, they have become common archetypes in many scientific and engineering fields, such as quantum cryptography, game theory and physics. As the use of Alice and Bob became more widespread, additional characters were added, sometimes each with a particular meaning. These characters do not have to refer to human beings; they refer to generic agents which might be different computers or even different programmes running on a single computer.

See also

• Cryptography
• Password
• Secure password generator

Links

• WP: Alice and Bob
• WP: Computer security
• WP: Public-key cryptography
• WP: Cryptanalysis
• WP: Password cracking
• WP: Password strength