In cryptography, Kerckhoffs's principle (also called Kerckhoffs's Desiderata, Kerckhoffs's assumption, axiom, or law) was stated by Auguste Kerckhoffs in the 19th century: A cryptosystem should be secure even if everything about the system, except the key, is public knowledge.
Kerckhoffs's principle was reformulated (perhaps independently) by Claude Shannon as "The enemy knows the system." In that form, it is called Shannon's maxim. In contrast to "security through obscurity," it is widely embraced by cryptographers.
Read more about Kerckhoffs's Principle: Origins, Explanation of The Principle, Applications, Security Through Obscurity
Famous quotes containing the word principle:
“To invent without scruple a new principle to every new phenomenon, instead of adapting it to the old; to overload our hypothesis with a variety of this kind, are certain proofs that none of these principles is the just one, and that we only desire, by a number of falsehoods, to cover our ignorance of the truth.”
—David Hume (1711–1776)