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German Lorenz cipher machine, used in World War II to encrypt very-high-level general staff messages

Cryptography (or cryptology; from Greek κρυπτός kryptós, "hidden, secret"; and γράφειν graphein, "writing", or -λογία -logia, "study", respectively)[1] is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of third parties (called adversaries).[2] More generally, it is about constructing and analyzing protocols that block adversaries;[3] various aspects in information security such as data confidentiality, data integrity, authentication, and non-repudiation[4] are central to modern cryptography. Modern cryptography exists at the intersection of the disciplines of mathematics, computer science, and electrical engineering. Applications of cryptography include ATM cards, computer passwords, and electronic commerce.

Cryptography prior to the modern age was effectively synonymous with encryption, the conversion of information from a readable state to apparent nonsense. The originator of an encrypted message shared the decoding technique needed to recover the original information only with intended recipients, thereby precluding unwanted persons from doing the same. Since World War I and the advent of the computer, the methods used to carry out cryptology have become increasingly complex and its application more widespread.

Modern cryptography is heavily based on mathematical theory and computer science practice; cryptographic algorithms are designed around computational hardness assumptions, making such algorithms hard to break in practice by any adversary. It is theoretically possible to break such a system, but it is infeasible to do so by any known practical means. These schemes are therefore termed computationally secure; theoretical advances, e.g., improvements in integer factorization algorithms, and faster computing technology require these solutions to be continually adapted. There exist information-theoretically secure schemes that provably cannot be broken even with unlimited computing power—an example is the one-time pad—but these schemes are more difficult to implement than the best theoretically breakable but computationally secure mechanisms.

The growth of cryptographic technology has raised a number of legal issues in the information age. Cryptography's potential for use as a tool for espionage and sedition has led many governments to classify it as a weapon and to limit or even prohibit its use and export.[5] In some jurisdictions where the use of cryptography is legal, laws permit investigators to compel the disclosure of encryption keys for documents relevant to an investigation.[6] Cryptography also plays a major role in digital rights management and piracy of digital media.[7]

Until modern times cryptography referred almost exclusively to encryption, which is the process of converting ordinary information (called plaintext) into unintelligible text (called ciphertext).[8] Decryption is the reverse, in other words, moving from the unintelligible ciphertext back to plaintext. A cipher (or cypher) is a pair of algorithms that create the encryption and the reversing decryption. The detailed operation of a cipher is controlled both by the algorithm and in each instance by a "key". This is a secret (ideally known only to the communicants), usually a short string of characters, which is needed to decrypt the ciphertext. Formally, a "cryptosystem" is the ordered list of elements of finite possible plaintexts, finite possible cyphertexts, finite possible keys, and the encryption and decryption algorithms which correspond to each key. Keys are important both formally and in actual practice, as ciphers without variable keys can be trivially broken with only the knowledge of the cipher used and are therefore useless (or even counter-productive) for most purposes. Historically, ciphers were often used directly for encryption or decryption without additional procedures such as authentication or integrity checks.

In colloquial use, the term "code" is often used to mean any method of encryption or concealment of meaning. However, in cryptography, code has a more specific meaning. It means the replacement of a unit of plaintext (i.e., a meaningful word or phrase) with a code word (for example, "wallaby" replaces "attack at dawn"). Codes are no longer used in serious cryptography—except incidentally for such things as unit designations (e.g., Bronco Flight or Operation Overlord)—since properly chosen ciphers are both more practical and more secure than even the best codes and also are better adapted to computers.

Cryptanalysis is the term used for the study of methods for obtaining the meaning of encrypted information without access to the key normally required to do so; i.e., it is the study of how to crack encryption algorithms or their implementations.

Some use the terms cryptography and cryptology interchangeably in English, while others (including US military practice generally) use cryptography to refer specifically to the use and practice of cryptographic techniques and cryptology to refer to the combined study of cryptography and cryptanalysis.[9][10] English is more flexible than several other languages in which cryptology (done by cryptologists) is always used in the second sense above. RFC 2828 advises that steganography is sometimes included in cryptology.[11]

The study of characteristics of languages that have some application in cryptography or cryptology (e.g. frequency data, letter combinations, universal patterns, etc.) is called cryptolinguistics.

History of cryptography and cryptanalysis[edit]

Before the modern era, cryptography was concerned solely with message confidentiality (i.e., encryption)—conversion of messages from a comprehensible form into an incomprehensible one and back again at the other end, rendering it unreadable by interceptors or eavesdroppers without secret knowledge (namely the key needed for decryption of that message). Encryption was used to (attempt to) ensure secrecy in communications, such as those of spies, military leaders, and diplomats. In recent decades, the field has expanded beyond confidentiality concerns to include techniques for message integrity checking, sender/receiver identity authentication, digital signatures, interactive proofs and secure computation, among others.

Classic cryptography[edit]

Reconstructed ancient Greek scytale, an early cipher device

The earliest forms of secret writing required little more than writing implements since most people could not read. More literacy, or literate opponents, required actual cryptography. The main classical cipher types are transposition ciphers, which rearrange the order of letters in a message (e.g., 'hello world' becomes 'ehlol owrdl' in a trivially simple rearrangement scheme), and substitution ciphers, which systematically replace letters or groups of letters with other letters or groups of letters (e.g., 'fly at once' becomes 'gmz bu podf' by replacing each letter with the one following it in the Latin alphabet). Simple versions of either have never offered much confidentiality from enterprising opponents. An early substitution cipher was the Caesar cipher, in which each letter in the plaintext was replaced by a letter some fixed number of positions further down the alphabet. Suetonius reports that Julius Caesar used it with a shift of three to communicate with his generals. Atbash is an example of an early Hebrew cipher. The earliest known use of cryptography is some carved ciphertext on stone in Egypt (ca 1900 BCE), but this may have been done for the amusement of literate observers rather than as a way of concealing information.

The Greeks of Classical times are said to have known of ciphers (e.g., the scytale transposition cipher claimed to have been used by the Spartan military).[12] Steganography (i.e., hiding even the existence of a message so as to keep it confidential) was also first developed in ancient times. An early example, from Herodotus, was a message tattooed on a slave's shaved head and concealed under the regrown hair.[8] More modern examples of steganography include the use of invisible ink, microdots, and digital watermarks to conceal information.

In India, the 2000-year old Kamasutra of Vātsyāyana speaks of two different kinds of ciphers called Kautiliyam and Mulavediya. In the Kautiliyam, the cipher letter substitutions are based on phonetic relations, such as vowels becoming consonants. In the Mulavediya, the cipher alphabet consists of pairing letters and using the reciprocal ones.[8]

First page of a book by Al-Kindi which discusses encryption of messages

Ciphertexts produced by a classical cipher (and some modern ciphers) always reveal statistical information about the plaintext, which can often be used to break them. After the discovery of frequency analysis, perhaps by the Arab mathematician and polymath Al-Kindi (also known as Alkindus) in the 9th century,[13] nearly all such ciphers became more or less readily breakable by any informed attacker. Such classical ciphers still enjoy popularity today, though mostly as puzzles (see cryptogram). Al-Kindi wrote a book on cryptography entitled Risalah fi Istikhraj al-Mu'amma (Manuscript for the Deciphering Cryptographic Messages), which described the first known use frequency analysis cryptanalysis techniques.[13][14]

16th-century book-shaped French cipher machine, with arms of Henri II of France
Enciphered letter from Gabriel de Luetz d'Aramon, French Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, after 1546, with partial decipherment

Essentially all ciphers remained vulnerable to cryptanalysis using the frequency analysis technique until the development of the polyalphabetic cipher, most clearly by Leon Battista Alberti around the year 1467, though there is some indication that it was already known to Al-Kindi.[14] Alberti's innovation was to use different ciphers (i.e., substitution alphabets) for various parts of a message (perhaps for each successive plaintext letter at the limit). He also invented what was probably the first automatic cipher device, a wheel which implemented a partial realization of his invention. In the polyalphabetic Vigenère cipher, encryption uses a key word, which controls letter substitution depending on which letter of the key word is used. In the mid-19th century Charles Babbage showed that the Vigenère cipher was vulnerable to Kasiski examination, but this was first published about ten years later by Friedrich Kasiski.[15]

Although frequency analysis can be a powerful and general technique against many ciphers, encryption has still often been effective in practice, as many a would-be cryptanalyst was unaware of the technique. Breaking a message without using frequency analysis essentially required knowledge of the cipher used and perhaps of the key involved, thus making espionage, bribery, burglary, defection, etc., more attractive approaches to the cryptanalytically uninformed. It was finally explicitly recognized in the 19th century that secrecy of a cipher's algorithm is not a sensible nor practical safeguard of message security; in fact, it was further realized that any adequate cryptographic scheme (including ciphers) should remain secure even if the adversary fully understands the cipher algorithm itself. Security of the key used should alone be sufficient for a good cipher to maintain confidentiality under an attack. This fundamental principle was first explicitly stated in 1883 by Auguste Kerckhoffs and is generally called Kerckhoffs's Principle; alternatively and more bluntly, it was restated by Claude Shannon, the inventor of information theory and the fundamentals of theoretical cryptography, as Shannon's Maxim—'the enemy knows the system'.

Different physical devices and aids have been used to assist with ciphers. One of the earliest may have been the scytale of ancient Greece, a rod supposedly used by the Spartans as an aid for a transposition cipher (see image above). In medieval times, other aids were invented such as the cipher grille, which was also used for a kind of steganography. With the invention of polyalphabetic ciphers came more sophisticated aids such as Alberti's own cipher disk, Johannes Trithemius' tabula recta scheme, and Thomas Jefferson's multi cylinder (not publicly known, and reinvented independently by Bazeries around 1900). Many mechanical encryption/decryption devices were invented early in the 20th century, and several patented, among them rotor machines—famously including the Enigma machine used by the German government and military from the late 1920s and during World War II.[16] The ciphers implemented by better quality examples of these machine designs brought about a substantial increase in cryptanalytic difficulty after WWI.[17]

Computer era[edit]

Cryptanalysis of the new mechanical devices proved to be both difficult and laborious. In the United Kingdom, cryptanalytic efforts at Bletchley Park during WWII spurred the development of more efficient means for carrying out repetitious tasks. This culminated in the development of the Colossus, the world's first fully electronic, digital, programmable computer, which assisted in the decryption of ciphers generated by the German Army's Lorenz SZ40/42 machine.

Just as the development of digital computers and electronics helped in cryptanalysis, it made possible much more complex ciphers. Furthermore, computers allowed for the encryption of any kind of data representable in any binary format, unlike classical ciphers which only encrypted written language texts; this was new and significant. Computer use has thus supplanted linguistic cryptography, both for cipher design and cryptanalysis. Many computer ciphers can be characterized by their operation on binary bit sequences (sometimes in groups or blocks), unlike classical and mechanical schemes, which generally manipulate traditional characters (i.e., letters and digits) directly. However, computers have also assisted cryptanalysis, which has compensated to some extent for increased cipher complexity. Nonetheless, good modern ciphers have stayed ahead of cryptanalysis; it is typically the case that use of a quality cipher is very efficient (i.e., fast and requiring few resources, such as memory or CPU capability), while breaking it requires an effort many orders of magnitude larger, and vastly larger than that required for any classical cipher, making cryptanalysis so inefficient and impractical as to be effectively impossible.

Extensive open academic research into cryptography is relatively recent; it began only in the mid-1970s. In recent times, IBM personnel designed the algorithm that became the Federal (i.e., US) Data Encryption Standard; Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman published their key agreement algorithm;[18] and the RSA algorithm was published in Martin Gardner's Scientific American column. Since then, cryptography has become a widely used tool in communications, computer networks, and computer security generally. Some modern cryptographic techniques can only keep their keys secret if certain mathematical problems are intractable, such as the integer factorization or the discrete logarithm problems, so there are deep connections with abstract mathematics. There are very few cryptosytems that are proven to be unconditionally secure. The one-time pad is one. There are a few important ones that are proven secure under certain unproven assumptions. For example, the infeasibility of factoring extremely large integers is the basis for believing that RSA is secure, and some other systems, but even there, the proof is usually lost due to practical considerations. There are systems similar to RSA, such as one by Michael O. Rabin that is provably secure provided factoring n = pq is impossible, but the more practical system RSA has never been proved secure in this sense. The discrete logarithm problem is the basis for believing some other cryptosystems are secure, and again, there are related, less practical systems that are provably secure relative to the discrete log problem.[19]

As well as being aware of cryptographic history, cryptographic algorithm and system designers must also sensibly consider probable future developments while working on their designs. For instance, continuous improvements in computer processing power have increased the scope of brute-force attacks, so when specifying key lengths, the required key lengths are similarly advancing.[20] The potential effects of quantum computing are already being considered by some cryptographic system designers; the announced imminence of small implementations of these machines may be making the need for this preemptive caution rather more than merely speculative.[4]

Essentially, prior to the early 20th century, cryptography was chiefly concerned with linguistic and lexicographic patterns. Since then the emphasis has shifted, and cryptography now makes extensive use of mathematics, including aspects of information theory, computational complexity, statistics, combinatorics, abstract algebra, number theory, and finite mathematics generally. Cryptography is also a branch of engineering, but an unusual one since it deals with active, intelligent, and malevolent opposition (see cryptographic engineering and security engineering); other kinds of engineering (e.g., civil or chemical engineering) need deal only with neutral natural forces. There is also active research examining the relationship between cryptographic problems and quantum physics (see quantum cryptography and quantum computer).

Modern cryptography[edit]

The modern field of cryptography can be divided into several areas of study. The chief ones are discussed here; see Topics in Cryptography for more.

Symmetric-key cryptography[edit]

Symmetric-key cryptography, where a single key is used for encryption and decryption

Symmetric-key cryptography refers to encryption methods in which both the sender and receiver share the same key (or, less commonly, in which their keys are different, but related in an easily computable way). This was the only kind of encryption publicly known until June 1976.[18]

One round (out of 8.5) of the IDEA cipher, used in some versions of PGP for high-speed encryption of, for instance, e-mail

Symmetric key ciphers are implemented as either block ciphers or stream ciphers. A block cipher enciphers input in blocks of plaintext as opposed to individual characters, the input form used by a stream cipher.

The Data Encryption Standard (DES) and the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) are block cipher designs which have been designated cryptography standards by the US government (though DES's designation was finally withdrawn after the AES was adopted).[21] Despite its deprecation as an official standard, DES (especially its still-approved and much more secure triple-DES variant) remains quite popular; it is used across a wide range of applications, from ATM encryption[22] to e-mail privacy[23] and secure remote access.[24] Many other block ciphers have been designed and released, with considerable variation in quality. Many have been thoroughly broken, such as FEAL.[4][25]

Stream ciphers, in contrast to the 'block' type, create an arbitrarily long stream of key material, which is combined with the plaintext bit-by-bit or character-by-character, somewhat like the one-time pad. In a stream cipher, the output stream is created based on a hidden internal state which changes as the cipher operates. That internal state is initially set up using the secret key material. RC4 is a widely used stream cipher; see Category:Stream ciphers.[4] Block ciphers can be used as stream ciphers; see Block cipher modes of operation.

Cryptographic hash functions are a third type of cryptographic algorithm. They take a message of any length as input, and output a short, fixed length hash which can be used in (for example) a digital signature. For good hash functions, an attacker cannot find two messages that produce the same hash. MD4 is a long-used hash function which is now broken; MD5, a strengthened variant of MD4, is also widely used but broken in practice. The US National Security Agency developed the Secure Hash Algorithm series of MD5-like hash functions: SHA-0 was a flawed algorithm that the agency withdrew; SHA-1 is widely deployed and more secure than MD5, but cryptanalysts have identified attacks against it; the SHA-2 family improves on SHA-1, but it isn't yet widely deployed; and the US standards authority thought it "prudent" from a security perspective to develop a new standard to "significantly improve the robustness of NIST's overall hash algorithm toolkit."[26] Thus, a hash function design competition was meant to select a new U.S. national standard, to be called SHA-3, by 2012. The competition ended on October 2, 2012 when the NIST announced that Keccak would be the new SHA-3 hash algorithm.[27]

Message authentication codes (MACs) are much like cryptographic hash functions, except that a secret key can be used to authenticate the hash value upon receipt;[4] this additional complication blocks an attack scheme against bare digest algorithms, and so has been thought worth the effort.

Public-key cryptography[edit]

Public-key cryptography, where different keys are used for encryption and decryption

Symmetric-key cryptosystems use the same key for encryption and decryption of a message, though a message or group of messages may have a different key than others. A significant disadvantage of symmetric ciphers is the key management necessary to use them securely. Each distinct pair of communicating parties must, ideally, share a different key, and perhaps each ciphertext exchanged as well. The number of keys required increases as the square of the number of network members, which very quickly requires complex key management schemes to keep them all consistent and secret. The difficulty of securely establishing a secret key between two communicating parties, when a secure channel does not already exist between them, also presents a chicken-and-egg problem which is a considerable practical obstacle for cryptography users in the real world.

Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman, authors of the first published paper on public-key cryptography

In a groundbreaking 1976 paper, Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman proposed the notion of public-key (also, more generally, called asymmetric key) cryptography in which two different but mathematically related keys are used—a public key and a private key.[28] A public key system is so constructed that calculation of one key (the 'private key') is computationally infeasible from the other (the 'public key'), even though they are necessarily related. Instead, both keys are generated secretly, as an interrelated pair.[29] The historian David Kahn described public-key cryptography as "the most revolutionary new concept in the field since polyalphabetic substitution emerged in the Renaissance".[30]

In public-key cryptosystems, the public key may be freely distributed, while its paired private key must remain secret. In a public-key encryption system, the public key is used for encryption, while the private or secret key is used for decryption. While Diffie and Hellman could not find such a system, they showed that public-key cryptography was indeed possible by presenting the Diffie–Hellman key exchange protocol, a solution that is now widely used in secure communications to allow two parties to secretly agree on a shared encryption key.[18]

Diffie and Hellman's publication sparked widespread academic efforts in finding a practical public-key encryption system. This race was finally won in 1978 by Ronald Rivest, Adi Shamir, and Len Adleman, whose solution has since become known as the RSA algorithm.[31]

The Diffie–Hellman and RSA algorithms, in addition to being the first publicly known examples of high quality public-key algorithms, have been among the most widely used. Others include the Cramer–Shoup cryptosystem, ElGamal encryption, and various elliptic curve techniques. See Category:Asymmetric-key cryptosystems.

To much surprise, a document published in 1997 by the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), a British intelligence organization, revealed that cryptographers at GCHQ had anticipated several academic developments.[32] Reportedly, around 1970, James H. Ellis had conceived the principles of asymmetric key cryptography. In 1973, Clifford Cocks invented a solution that essentially resembles the RSA algorithm.[32][33] And in 1974, Malcolm J. Williamson is claimed to have developed the Diffie–Hellman key exchange.[34]

Padlock icon from the Firefox Web browser, which indicates that TLS, a public-key cryptography system, is in use.

Public-key cryptography can also be used for implementing digital signature schemes. A digital signature is reminiscent of an ordinary signature; they both have the characteristic of being easy for a user to produce, but difficult for anyone else to forge. Digital signatures can also be permanently tied to the content of the message being signed; they cannot then be 'moved' from one document to another, for any attempt will be detectable. In digital signature schemes, there are two algorithms: one for signing, in which a secret key is used to process the message (or a hash of the message, or both), and one for verification, in which the matching public key is used with the message to check the validity of the signature. RSA and DSA are two of the most popular digital signature schemes. Digital signatures are central to the operation of public key infrastructures and many network security schemes (e.g., SSL/TLS, many VPNs, etc.).[25]

Public-key algorithms are most often based on the computational complexity of "hard" problems, often from number theory. For example, the hardness of RSA is related to the integer factorization problem, while Diffie–Hellman and DSA are related to the discrete logarithm problem. More recently, elliptic curve cryptography has developed, a system in which security is based on number theoretic problems involving elliptic curves. Because of the difficulty of the underlying problems, most public-key algorithms involve operations such as modular multiplication and exponentiation, which are much more computationally expensive than the techniques used in most block ciphers, especially with typical key sizes. As a result, public-key cryptosystems are commonly hybrid cryptosystems, in which a fast high-quality symmetric-key encryption algorithm is used for the message itself, while the relevant symmetric key is sent with the message, but encrypted using a public-key algorithm. Similarly, hybrid signature schemes are often used, in which a cryptographic hash function is computed, and only the resulting hash is digitally signed.[4]

Main article: Cryptanalysis
Variants of the Enigma machine, used by Germany's military and civil authorities from the late 1920s through World War II, implemented a complex electro-mechanical polyalphabetic cipher. Breaking and reading of the Enigma cipher at Poland's Cipher Bureau, for 7 years before the war, and subsequent decryption at Bletchley Park, was important to Allied victory.[8]

The goal of cryptanalysis is to find some weakness or insecurity in a cryptographic scheme, thus permitting its subversion or evasion.

It is a common misconception that every encryption method can be broken. In connection with his WWII work at Bell Labs, Claude Shannon proved that the one-time pad cipher is unbreakable, provided the key material is truly random, never reused, kept secret from all possible attackers, and of equal or greater length than the message.[35] Most ciphers, apart from the one-time pad, can be broken with enough computational effort by brute force attack, but the amount of effort needed may be exponentially dependent on the key size, as compared to the effort needed to make use of the cipher. In such cases, effective security could be achieved if it is proven that the effort required (i.e., "work factor", in Shannon's terms) is beyond the ability of any adversary. This means it must be shown that no efficient method (as opposed to the time-consuming brute force method) can be found to break the cipher. Since no such proof has been found to date, the one-time-pad remains the only theoretically unbreakable cipher.

There are a wide variety of cryptanalytic attacks, and they can be classified in any of several ways. A common distinction turns on what an attacker knows and what capabilities are available. In a ciphertext-only attack, the cryptanalyst has access only to the ciphertext (good modern cryptosystems are usually effectively immune to ciphertext-only attacks). In a known-plaintext attack, the cryptanalyst has access to a ciphertext and its corresponding plaintext (or to many such pairs). In a chosen-plaintext attack, the cryptanalyst may choose a plaintext and learn its corresponding ciphertext (perhaps many times); an example is gardening, used by the British during WWII. Finally, in a chosen-ciphertext attack, the cryptanalyst may be able to choose ciphertexts and learn their corresponding plaintexts.[4] Also important, often overwhelmingly so, are mistakes (generally in the design or use of one of the protocols involved; see Cryptanalysis of the Enigma for some historical examples of this).

Poznań monument (center) to Polish cryptologists whose breaking of Germany's Enigma machine ciphers, beginning in 1932, altered the course of World War II

Cryptanalysis of symmetric-key ciphers typically involves looking for attacks against the block ciphers or stream ciphers that are more efficient than any attack that could be against a perfect cipher. For example, a simple brute force attack against DES requires one known plaintext and 255 decryptions, trying approximately half of the possible keys, to reach a point at which chances are better than even that the key sought will have been found. But this may not be enough assurance; a linear cryptanalysis attack against DES requires 243 known plaintexts and approximately 243 DES operations.[36] This is a considerable improvement on brute force attacks.

Public-key algorithms are based on the computational difficulty of various problems. The most famous of these is integer factorization (e.g., the RSA algorithm is based on a problem related to integer factoring), but the discrete logarithm problem is also important. Much public-key cryptanalysis concerns numerical algorithms for solving these computational problems, or some of them, efficiently (i.e., in a practical time). For instance, the best known algorithms for solving the elliptic curve-based version of discrete logarithm are much more time-consuming than the best known algorithms for factoring, at least for problems of more or less equivalent size. Thus, other things being equal, to achieve an equivalent strength of attack resistance, factoring-based encryption techniques must use larger keys than elliptic curve techniques. For this reason, public-key cryptosystems based on elliptic curves have become popular since their invention in the mid-1990s.

While pure cryptanalysis uses weaknesses in the algorithms themselves, other attacks on cryptosystems are based on actual use of the algorithms in real devices, and are called side-channel attacks. If a cryptanalyst has access to, for example, the amount of time the device took to encrypt a number of plaintexts or report an error in a password or PIN character, he may be able to use a timing attack to break a cipher that is otherwise resistant to analysis. An attacker might also study the pattern and length of messages to derive valuable information; this is known as traffic analysis[37] and can be quite useful to an alert adversary. Poor administration of a cryptosystem, such as permitting too short keys, will make any system vulnerable, regardless of other virtues. And, of course, social engineering, and other attacks against the personnel who work with cryptosystems or the messages they handle (e.g., bribery, extortion, blackmail, espionage, torture, ...) may be the most productive attacks of all.

Cryptographic primitives[edit]

Much of the theoretical work in cryptography concerns cryptographic primitives—algorithms with basic cryptographic properties—and their relationship to other cryptographic problems. More complicated cryptographic tools are then built from these basic primitives. These primitives provide fundamental properties, which are used to develop more complex tools called cryptosystems or cryptographic protocols, which guarantee one or more high-level security properties. Note however, that the distinction between cryptographic primitives and cryptosystems, is quite arbitrary; for example, the RSA algorithm is sometimes considered a cryptosystem, and sometimes a primitive. Typical examples of cryptographic primitives include pseudorandom functions, one-way functions, etc.

One or more cryptographic primitives are often used to develop a more complex algorithm, called a cryptographic system, or cryptosystem. Cryptosystems (e.g., El-Gamal encryption) are designed to provide particular functionality (e.g., public key encryption) while guaranteeing certain security properties (e.g., chosen-plaintext attack (CPA) security in the random oracle model). Cryptosystems use the properties of the underlying cryptographic primitives to support the system's security properties. Of course, as the distinction between primitives and cryptosystems is somewhat arbitrary, a sophisticated cryptosystem can be derived from a combination of several more primitive cryptosystems. In many cases, the cryptosystem's structure involves back and forth communication among two or more parties in space (e.g., between the sender of a secure message and its receiver) or across time (e.g., cryptographically protected backup data). Such cryptosystems are sometimes called cryptographic protocols.

Some widely known cryptosystems include RSA encryption, Schnorr signature, El-Gamal encryption, PGP, etc. More complex cryptosystems include electronic cash[38] systems, signcryption systems, etc. Some more 'theoretical' cryptosystems include interactive proof systems,[39] (like zero-knowledge proofs),[40] systems for secret sharing,[41][42] etc.

Until recently[timeframe?], most security properties of most cryptosystems were demonstrated using empirical techniques or using ad hoc reasoning. Recently[timeframe?], there has been considerable effort to develop formal techniques for establishing the security of cryptosystems; this has been generally called provable security. The general idea of provable security is to give arguments about the computational difficulty needed to compromise some security aspect of the cryptosystem (i.e., to any adversary).

The study of how best to implement and integrate cryptography in software applications is itself a distinct field (see Cryptographic engineering and Security engineering).

Legal issues[edit]

Cryptography has long been of interest to intelligence gathering and law enforcement agencies. Secret communications may be criminal or even treasonous. Because of its facilitation of privacy, and the diminution of privacy attendant on its prohibition, cryptography is also of considerable interest to civil rights supporters. Accordingly, there has been a history of controversial legal issues surrounding cryptography, especially since the advent of inexpensive computers has made widespread access to high quality cryptography possible.

In some countries, even the domestic use of cryptography is, or has been, restricted. Until 1999, France significantly restricted the use of cryptography domestically, though it has since relaxed many of these rules. In China and Iran, a license is still required to use cryptography.[5] Many countries have tight restrictions on the use of cryptography. Among the more restrictive are laws in Belarus, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Pakistan, Singapore, Tunisia, and Vietnam.[43]

In the United States, cryptography is legal for domestic use, but there has been much conflict over legal issues related to cryptography. One particularly important issue has been the export of cryptography and cryptographic software and hardware. Probably because of the importance of cryptanalysis in World War II and an expectation that cryptography would continue to be important for national security, many Western governments have, at some point, strictly regulated export of cryptography. After World War II, it was illegal in the US to sell or distribute encryption technology overseas; in fact, encryption was designated as auxiliary military equipment and put on the United States Munitions List.[44] Until the development of the personal computer, asymmetric key algorithms (i.e., public key techniques), and the Internet, this was not especially problematic. However, as the Internet grew and computers became more widely available, high-quality encryption techniques became well known around the globe.

Export controls[edit]

In the 1990s, there were several challenges to US export regulation of cryptography. After the source code for Philip Zimmermann's Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) encryption program found its way onto the Internet in June 1991, a complaint by RSA Security (then called RSA Data Security, Inc.) resulted in a lengthy criminal investigation of Zimmermann by the US Customs Service and the FBI, though no charges were ever filed.[45][46] Daniel J. Bernstein, then a graduate student at UC Berkeley, brought a lawsuit against the US government challenging some aspects of the restrictions based on free speech grounds. The 1995 case Bernstein v. United States ultimately resulted in a 1999 decision that printed source code for cryptographic algorithms and systems was protected as free speech by the United States Constitution.[47]

In 1996, thirty-nine countries signed the Wassenaar Arrangement, an arms control treaty that deals with the export of arms and "dual-use" technologies such as cryptography. The treaty stipulated that the use of cryptography with short key-lengths (56-bit for symmetric encryption, 512-bit for RSA) would no longer be export-controlled.[48] Cryptography exports from the US became less strictly regulated as a consequence of a major relaxation in 2000;[49] there are no longer very many restrictions on key sizes in US-exported mass-market software. Since this relaxation in US export restrictions, and because most personal computers connected to the Internet include US-sourced web browsers such as Firefox or Internet Explorer, almost every Internet user worldwide has potential access to quality cryptography via their browsers (e.g., via Transport Layer Security). The Mozilla Thunderbird and Microsoft Outlook E-mail client programs similarly can transmit and receive emails via TLS, and can send and receive email encrypted with S/MIME. Many Internet users don't realize that their basic application software contains such extensive cryptosystems. These browsers and email programs are so ubiquitous that even governments whose intent is to regulate civilian use of cryptography generally don't find it practical to do much to control distribution or use of cryptography of this quality, so even when such laws are in force, actual enforcement is often effectively impossible.[citation needed]

NSA involvement[edit]

See also: Clipper chip

Another contentious issue connected to cryptography in the United States is the influence of the National Security Agency on cipher development and policy. The NSA was involved with the design of DES during its development at IBM and its consideration by the National Bureau of Standards as a possible Federal Standard for cryptography.[50] DES was designed to be resistant to differential cryptanalysis,[51] a powerful and general cryptanalytic technique known to the NSA and IBM, that became publicly known only when it was rediscovered in the late 1980s.[52] According to Steven Levy, IBM discovered differential cryptanalysis,[46] but kept the technique secret at the NSA's request. The technique became publicly known only when Biham and Shamir re-discovered and announced it some years later. The entire affair illustrates the difficulty of determining what resources and knowledge an attacker might actually have.

Another instance of the NSA's involvement was the 1993 Clipper chip affair, an encryption microchip intended to be part of the Capstone cryptography-control initiative. Clipper was widely criticized by cryptographers for two reasons. The cipher algorithm (called Skipjack) was then classified (declassified in 1998, long after the Clipper initiative lapsed). The classified cipher caused concerns that the NSA had deliberately made the cipher weak in order to assist its intelligence efforts. The whole initiative was also criticized based on its violation of Kerckhoffs's Principle, as the scheme included a special escrow key held by the government for use by law enforcement, for example in wiretaps.[46]

Digital rights management[edit]

Cryptography is central to digital rights management (DRM), a group of techniques for technologically controlling use of copyrighted material, being widely implemented and deployed at the behest of some copyright holders. In 1998, U.S. President Bill Clinton signed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which criminalized all production, dissemination, and use of certain cryptanalytic techniques and technology (now known or later discovered); specifically, those that could be used to circumvent DRM technological schemes.[53] This had a noticeable impact on the cryptography research community since an argument can be made that any cryptanalytic research violated, or might violate, the DMCA. Similar statutes have since been enacted in several countries and regions, including the implementation in the EU Copyright Directive. Similar restrictions are called for by treaties signed by World Intellectual Property Organization member-states.

The United States Department of Justice and FBI have not enforced the DMCA as rigorously as had been feared by some, but the law, nonetheless, remains a controversial one. Niels Ferguson, a well-respected cryptography researcher, has publicly stated that he will not release some of his research into an Intel security design for fear of prosecution under the DMCA.[54] Both Alan Cox (longtime number 2 in Linux kernel development) and Edward Felten (and some of his students at Princeton) have encountered problems related to the Act. Dmitry Sklyarov was arrested during a visit to the US from Russia, and jailed for five months pending trial for alleged violations of the DMCA arising from work he had done in Russia, where the work was legal. In 2007, the cryptographic keys responsible for Blu-ray and HD DVD content scrambling were discovered and released onto the Internet. In both cases, the MPAA sent out numerous DMCA takedown notices, and there was a massive Internet backlash[7] triggered by the perceived impact of such notices on fair use and free speech.

Forced disclosure of encryption keys[edit]

Main article: Key disclosure law

In the United Kingdom, the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act gives UK police the powers to force suspects to decrypt files or hand over passwords that protect encryption keys. Failure to comply is an offense in its own right, punishable on conviction by a two-year jail sentence or up to five years in cases involving national security.[6] Successful prosecutions have occurred under the Act; the first, in 2009,[55] resulted in a term of 13 months' imprisonment.[56] Similar forced disclosure laws in Australia, Finland, France, and India compel individual suspects under investigation to hand over encryption keys or passwords during a criminal investigation.

In the United States, the federal criminal case of United States v. Fricosu addressed whether a search warrant can compel a person to reveal an encryption passphrase or password.[57] The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) argued that this is a violation of the protection from self-incrimination given by the Fifth Amendment.[58] In 2012, the court ruled that under the All Writs Act, the defendant was required to produce an unencrypted hard drive for the court.[59]

In many jurisdictions, the legal status of forced disclosure remains unclear.

See also[edit]

  1. ^ Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; Jones, Henry Stuart; McKenzie, Roderick (1984). A Greek-English Lexicon. Oxford University Press.
  2. ^ Rivest, Ronald L. (1990). "Cryptology". In J. Van Leeuwen. Handbook of Theoretical Computer Science 1. Elsevier.
  3. ^ Bellare, Mihir; Rogaway, Phillip (21 September 2005). "Introduction". Introduction to Modern Cryptography. p. 10.
  4. ^ a b c d e f g Menezes, A. J.; van Oorschot, P. C.; Vanstone, S. A. Handbook of Applied Cryptography. ISBN 0-8493-8523-7.
  5. ^ a b "Overview per country". Crypto Law Survey. February 2013. Retrieved 26 March 2015.
  6. ^ a b "UK Data Encryption Disclosure Law Takes Effect". PC World. 1 October 2007. Retrieved 26 March 2015.
  7. ^ a b Doctorow, Cory (2 May 2007). "Digg users revolt over AACS key". Boing Boing. Retrieved 26 March 2015.
  8. ^ a b c d Kahn, David (1967). The Codebreakers. ISBN 0-684-83130-9.
  9. ^ Oded Goldreich, Foundations of Cryptography, Volume 1: Basic Tools, Cambridge University Press, 2001, ISBN 0-521-79172-3
  10. ^ "Cryptology (definition)". Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.). Merriam-Webster. Retrieved 26 March 2015.
  11. ^ "RFC 2828 - Internet Security Glossary". Internet Engineering Task Force. May 2000. Retrieved 26 March 2015.
  12. ^ I︠A︡shchenko, V. V. (2002). Cryptography: an introduction. AMS Bookstore. p. 6. ISBN 0-8218-2986-6.
  13. ^ a b Singh, Simon (2000). The Code Book. New York: Anchor Books. pp. 14–20. ISBN 9780385495325.
  14. ^ a b Al-Kadi, Ibrahim A. (April 1992). "The origins of cryptology: The Arab contributions". Cryptologia 16 (2): 97–126.
  15. ^ Schrödel, Tobias (October 2008). "Breaking Short Vigenère Ciphers". Cryptologia 32 (4): 334–337. doi:10.1080/01611190802336097.
  16. ^ Hakim, Joy (1995). A History of US: War, Peace and all that Jazz. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-509514-6.
  17. ^ Gannon, James (2001). Stealing Secrets, Telling Lies: How Spies and Codebreakers Helped Shape the Twentieth Century. Washington, D.C.: Brassey's. ISBN 1-57488-367-4.
  18. ^ a b c Diffie, Whitfield; Hellman, Martin (November 1976). "New Directions in Cryptography" (PDF). IEEE Transactions on Information Theory. IT-22: 644–654.
  19. ^ Cryptography: Theory and Practice, Third Edition (Discrete Mathematics and Its Applications), 2005, by Douglas R. Stinson, Chapman and Hall/CRC
  20. ^ Blaze, Matt; Diffie, Whitefield; Rivest, Ronald L.; Schneier, Bruce; Shimomura, Tsutomu; Thompson, Eric; Wiener, Michael (January 1996). "Minimal key lengths for symmetric ciphers to provide adequate commercial security". Fortify. Retrieved 26 March 2015.
  21. ^ "FIPS PUB 197: The official Advanced Encryption Standard" (PDF). Computer Security Resource Center. National Institute of Standards and Technology. Retrieved 26 March 2015.
  22. ^ "NCUA letter to credit unions" (PDF). National Credit Union Administration. July 2004. Retrieved 26 March 2015.
  23. ^ "RFC 2440 - Open PGP Message Format". Internet Engineering Task Force. November 1998. Retrieved 26 March 2015.
  24. ^ Golen, Pawel (19 July 2002). "SSH". WindowSecurity. Retrieved 26 March 2015.
  25. ^ a b Schneier, Bruce (1996). Applied Cryptography (2nd ed.). Wiley. ISBN 0-471-11709-9.
  26. ^ "Notices". Federal Register 72 (212). 2 November 2007.
    Archived 28 February 2008 at the Wayback Machine
  27. ^ "NIST Selects Winner of Secure Hash Algorithm (SHA-3) Competition". Tech Beat. National Institute of Standards and Technology. October 2, 2012. Retrieved 26 March 2015.
  28. ^ Diffie, Whitfield; Hellman, Martin (8 June 1976). "Multi-user cryptographic techniques". AFIPS Proceedings 45: 109–112.
  29. ^ Ralph Merkle was working on similar ideas at the time and encountered publication delays, and Hellman has suggested that the term used should be Diffie–Hellman–Merkle aysmmetric key cryptography.
  30. ^ Kahn, David (Fall 1979). "Cryptology Goes Public". Foreign Affairs 58 (1): 153.
  31. ^ Rivest, Ronald L.; Shamir, A.; Adleman, L. (1978). "A Method for Obtaining Digital Signatures and Public-Key Cryptosystems". Communications of the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) 21 (2): 120–126.
    Archived November 16, 2001 at the Wayback Machine
    Previously released as an MIT "Technical Memo" in April 1977, and published in Martin Gardner's Scientific American Mathematical recreations column
  32. ^ a b Wayner, Peter (24 December 1997). "British Document Outlines Early Encryption Discovery". New York Times. Retrieved 26 March 2015.
  33. ^ Cocks, Clifford (20 November 1973). "A Note on 'Non-Secret Encryption'" (PDF). CESG Research Report.
  34. ^ Singh, Simon (1999). The Code Book. Doubleday. pp. 279–292.
  35. ^ Shannon, Claude; Weaver, Warren (1963). The Mathematical Theory of Communication. University of Illinois Press. ISBN 0-252-72548-4.
  36. ^ Junod, Pascal (2001). "On the Complexity of Matsui's Attack" (PDF). Selected Areas in Cryptography.
  37. ^ Song, Dawn; Wagner, David A.; Tian, Xuqing (2001). "Timing Analysis of Keystrokes and Timing Attacks on SSH" (PDF). Tenth USENIX Security Symposium.
  38. ^ Brands, S. (1994). "Untraceable Off-line Cash in Wallets with Observers". Advances in Cryptology—Proceedings of CRYPTO (Springer-Verlag). [dead link]
  39. ^ Babai, László (1985). "Trading group theory for randomness". Proceedings of the Seventeenth Annual Symposium on the Theory of Computing (Association for Computing Machinery).
  40. ^ Goldwasser, S.; Micali, S.; Rackoff, C. (1989). "The Knowledge Complexity of Interactive Proof Systems". SIAM Journal on Computing 18 (1): 186–208.
  41. ^ Blakley, G. (June 1979). "Safeguarding cryptographic keys". Proceedings of AFIPS 1979 48: 313–317.
  42. ^ Shamir, A. (1979). "How to share a secret". Communications of the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) 22: 612–613.
  43. ^ "6.5.1 WHAT ARE THE CRYPTOGRAPHIC POLICIES OF SOME COUNTRIES?". RSA Laboratories. Retrieved 26 March 2015.
  44. ^ Rosenoer, Jonathan (1995). "CRYPTOGRAPHY & SPEECH". CyberLaw.
    Archived December 1, 2005 at the Wayback Machine
  45. ^ "Case Closed on Zimmermann PGP Investigation". IEEE Computer Society's Technical Committee on Security and Privacy. 14 February 1996. Retrieved 26 March 2015.
  46. ^ a b c Levy, Steven (2001). Crypto: How the Code Rebels Beat the Government—Saving Privacy in the Digital Age. Penguin Books. p. 56. ISBN 0-14-024432-8. OCLC 244148644 48066852 48846639.
  47. ^ "Bernstein v USDOJ". Electronic Privacy Information Center. United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. 6 May 1999. Retrieved 26 March 2015.
  48. ^ "DUAL-USE LIST - CATEGORY 5 – PART 2 – "INFORMATION SECURITY"" (DOC). Wassenaar Arrangement. Retrieved 26 March 2015.
  49. ^ "6.4 UNITED STATES CRYPTOGRAPHY EXPORT/IMPORT LAWS". RSA Laboratories. Retrieved 26 March 2015.
  50. ^ Schneier, Bruce (15 June 2000). "The Data Encryption Standard (DES)". Crypto-Gram. Retrieved 26 March 2015.
  51. ^ Coppersmith, D. (May 1994). "The Data Encryption Standard (DES) and its strength against attacks" (PDF). IBM Journal of Research and Development 38 (3): 243. doi:10.1147/rd.383.0243. Retrieved 26 March 2015.
  52. ^ Biham, E.; Shamir, A. (1991). "Differential cryptanalysis of DES-like cryptosystems" (PDF). Journal of Cryptology (Springer-Verlag) 4 (1): 3–72. Retrieved 26 March 2015.
  53. ^ "The Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998" (PDF). United States Copyright Office. Retrieved 26 March 2015.
  54. ^ Ferguson, Niels (15 August 2001). "Censorship in action: why I don't publish my HDCP results".
    Archived December 1, 2001 at the Wayback Machine
  55. ^ Williams, Christopher (11 August 2009). "Two convicted for refusal to decrypt data". The Register. Retrieved 26 March 2015.
  56. ^ Williams, Christopher (24 November 2009). "UK jails schizophrenic for refusal to decrypt files". The Register. Retrieved 26 March 2015.
  57. ^ Ingold, John (January 4, 2012). "Password case reframes Fifth Amendment rights in context of digital world". The Denver Post. Retrieved 26 March 2015.
  58. ^ Leyden, John (13 July 2011). "US court test for rights not to hand over crypto keys". The Register. Retrieved 26 March 2015.

Further reading[edit]

Further information: Books on cryptography
  • Becket, B (1988). Introduction to Cryptology. Blackwell Scientific Publications. ISBN 0-632-01836-4. OCLC 16832704.  Excellent coverage of many classical ciphers and cryptography concepts and of the "modern" DES and RSA systems.
  • Cryptography and Mathematics by Bernhard Esslinger, 200 pages, part of the free open-source package CrypTool, PDF download at the Wayback Machine (archived July 22, 2011). CrypTool is the most widespread e-learning program about cryptography and cryptanalysis, open source.
  • In Code: A Mathematical Journey by Sarah Flannery (with David Flannery). Popular account of Sarah's award-winning project on public-key cryptography, co-written with her father.
  • James Gannon, Stealing Secrets, Telling Lies: How Spies and Codebreakers Helped Shape the Twentieth Century, Washington, D.C., Brassey's, 2001, ISBN 1-57488-367-4.
  • Oded Goldreich, Foundations of Cryptography, in two volumes, Cambridge University Press, 2001 and 2004.
  • Introduction to Modern Cryptography by Jonathan Katz and Yehuda Lindell.
  • Alvin's Secret Code by Clifford B. Hicks (children's novel that introduces some basic cryptography and cryptanalysis).
  • Ibrahim A. Al-Kadi, "The Origins of Cryptology: the Arab Contributions," Cryptologia, vol. 16, no. 2 (April 1992), pp. 97–126.
  • Christof Paar, Jan Pelzl, Understanding Cryptography, A Textbook for Students and Practitioners. Springer, 2009. (Slides, online cryptography lectures and other information are available on the companion web site.) Very accessible introduction to practical cryptography for non-mathematicians.
  • Introduction to Modern Cryptography by Phillip Rogaway and Mihir Bellare, a mathematical introduction to theoretical cryptography including reduction-based security proofs. PDF download.
  • Johann-Christoph Woltag, 'Coded Communications (Encryption)' in Rüdiger Wolfrum (ed) Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law (Oxford University Press 2009). *"Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law". , giving an overview of international law issues regarding cryptography.
  • Jonathan Arbib & John Dwyer, Discrete Mathematics for Cryptography, 1st Edition ISBN 978-1-907934-01-8.
  • Stallings, William (March 2013). Cryptography and Network Security: Principles and Practice (6th ed.). Prentice Hall. ISBN 978-0133354690.

External links[edit]


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text:
Northern Rockies Regional Municipality

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
Northern Rockies
District municipality[1]
Northern Rockies Regional Municipality[2]
Northern Rockies Regional District, British Columbia Location.png
Country Canada
Province British Columbia
District municipality[1] February 6, 2009
 • Type District municipality
 • Mayor Bill Streeper
 • Councillors
Area (2011)[3]
 • Total 85,014.52 km2 (32,824.29 sq mi)
Population (2011)[4]
 • Total 5,290
 • Density 0.062/km2 (0.16/sq mi)
Time zone Pacific
Area code(s) 1 250

The Northern Rockies Regional Municipality (NRRM), formerly the Northern Rockies Regional District (NRRD), and before that the Fort Nelson-Liard Regional District, is a municipality in northeastern British Columbia, Canada. Although portrayed as a regional municipality in its official name, it is actually classified as a district municipality.[1] The NRRM’s offices are located in Fort Nelson, formerly an incorporated town that amalgamated with the NRRD on February 6, 2009 to form the NRRM.[5][6] With the Peace River Regional District as the southern part, it was the northern part of the Peace River-Liard Regional District, which was split into two on October 31, 1987.

The NRRM lies on the east slope of the Rocky Mountains, and comprises approximately 10% of the total area of the province of British Columbia, encompassing 85,014.52 square kilometres (32,824.29 sq mi).[3] Its southern boundary is the 58th parallel of latitude[7] and is bisected by the Alaska Highway from its southeast to its northwest. The Northern Rockies Regional Municipality is primarily made up of heavily forested areas and mountainous terrain.

The Northern Rockies Regional Municipality is the first of its kind in British Columbia in which an entire former regional district is governed and headed by a single municipal government. Its council comprises a mayor and six councillors. Bill Streeper has been the NRRM's mayor since it was formed.

Fort Nelson[edit]

With a 2011 population of 3,902,[8] Fort Nelson is the largest community in the Northern Rockies Regional Municipality. All of the NRRM's offices and officials are based out of Fort Nelson.

Fort Nelson First Nation is an aboriginal band situated directly outside of the town of Fort Nelson and a signatory nation of Treaty 8. The reserve is home to about 700 residents, making Fort Nelson First Nation one of the largest reservations in northern British Columbia. Dene and Cree are the most prevalent Aboriginal Canadian backgrounds found on the Fort Nelson First Nation reserve. The nation works closely with oil and gas producers to ensure safe and sustainable development in the Horn River Basin based on the fact that much of the new development in the Horn River Basin is occurring on traditional Fort Nelson First Nation land. The band operates Echo-Dene and the Liard Hot Springs lodge, as well as the band's very own kindergarten to grade twelve accredited educational institution named Chalo School. Liz Logan is the Chief Councilor of the Fort Nelson First Nation, recently reelected in August 2014. The FNFN Band Council consists of seven councilors, an increase from six. The chosen councilors then decided amongst themselves the Chief Councilor.[10] [11]

Prophet River First Nation[edit]

The Prophet River First Nation is the southernmost community in the Northern Rockies Regional Municipality. Prophet River’s main industries revolve around commercial services and provisions to the local and nearby oil and gas industry. Lynette Tsakoza is currently the chief of Prophet River First Nation which is a member of the Treaty 8 Tribal Association.[12]

Tetsa River[edit]

Tetsa River is a small community based on the Alaska Highway that is known for its eco-tourism and camping. Fishing, rafting, hunting, and other eco-tourism related activities are commonly practiced recreational attractants to the region. Tetsa River offers a popular fishing derby every August, in which residents from all over the region compete.

Toad River[edit]

Toad River is the largest regional community north of Fort Nelson in terms of population. The community is home to a highway maintenance camp, a small school accredited by the region's school district (School District 81), a community hall, two campgrounds, and two lodges. Toad River’s economy relies primarily on tourism, and is a popular destination for travellers on the Alaska Highway.

Muncho Lake[edit]

Muncho Lake is a community that is situated on the Muncho Lake Provincial Park. The park is known for its blue-coloured lake which attracts tourists to the area every year. Muncho Lake is situated on the Alaska Highway.

In the 2011 Census, Statistics Canada originally reported that the Northern Rockies Regional Municipality had a population of 4,987 living in 1,985 of its 2,271 total dwellings, a -12.5% change from its 2006 population of 5,702.[3] Statistics Canada subsequently amended the 2011 census results to a population of 5,290 living in 2,090 of its 2,317 total dwellings, a -7.2% change from 2006.[4] With a land area of 85,014.52 km2 (32,824.29 sq mi), it had a population density of 0.1/km2 (0.2/sq mi) in 2011.[3][4] Prior to the census, the estimated 2011 population of the NRRM was 6,324.[13]

  1. ^ a b c "Order of the Lieutenant Governor in Council (Order in Council No. 033)" (PDF). Province of British Columbia. January 29, 2009. p. 3. Retrieved September 20, 2014. The class of the municipality is a district municipality.
  2. ^ "British Columbia Regional Districts, Municipalities, Corporate Name, Date of Incorporation and Postal Address" (XLS). British Columbia Ministry of Communities, Sport and Cultural Development. Retrieved November 2, 2014.
  3. ^ a b c d "Population and dwelling counts, for Canada, provinces and territories, and census subdivisions (municipalities), 2011 and 2006 censuses (British Columbia)". Statistics Canada. January 30, 2013. Retrieved June 15, 2013.
  4. ^ a b c "Corrections and updates". Statistics Canada. March 21, 2013. Retrieved June 15, 2013.
  5. ^ "Fort Nelson". Northern Rockies Regional Municipality. Retrieved December 6, 2012.
  6. ^ "Statistics Relating to Regional and Municipal Governments in BC 2011" (PDF). British Columbia Ministry of Community, Sport and Cultural Development. p. 21 of 30. Retrieved December 6, 2012.
  7. ^ "Northern Rockies Regional Municipality". BC Geographical Names.
  8. ^ "Census Profile - Fort Nelson, Town, British Columbia (Dissolved census subdivision) and Northern Rockies, RD, British Columbia (Census division)". Statistics Canada. November 2, 2012. Retrieved December 6, 2012.
  9. ^ ===Fort Nelson First Nation===
  10. ^ "Fort Nelson First Nation". Fort Nelson First Nation. Retrieved 19 June 2012.
  11. ^
  12. ^ "Treat 8". Treat 8 Tribal Association. Retrieved 19 June 2012.
  13. ^ "2011 Sub-Provincial Population Estimates" (PDF). BC Stats. January 2012. Retrieved December 6, 2012.

External links[edit]

Coordinates: 59°00′00″N 123°45′00″W / 59.00000°N 123.75000°W / 59.00000; -123.75000

  1. ^ Fort Nelson First Nation Fort Nelson First Nation.  Missing or empty |title= (help)

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text:
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
As a Marshall Field's licensee, Macy's created a Pacific Northwest version of the Frango logo still used today across the country.

Frango mints are a brand of chocolate truffles first created for the Frederick & Nelson department stores. Traditionally flavored with mint and widely popularized by the Marshall Field and Company department store, they are now produced and distributed by Macy's department stores.[1] Frango is also the brand name of a line of various other related food products.

Historically associated with the Midwestern and Pacific Northwest regions of the United States, the candy is sold in various outlets throughout the country. Frangos were created by Seattle, Washington's Frederick & Nelson department store in 1918; the company and Frango trademarks were both acquired by Chicago's Marshall Field's department store, which introduced its recipe in 1929.[2] Frango mints were produced in large melting pots on the 13th floor of the flagship Marshall Field's store on State Street for 70 years.[3]

The origins of Frango mints go back to 1918, according to a trademark document from the U.S. Patent Office. Originally, the Frango was the name for a frozen dessert sold at the sophisticated Tea Room at Frederick & Nelson's department store, at Sixth Avenue and Pine Street in Seattle, Washington. The first Frango frozen dessert was available in maple and orange flavors. There are a few different theories as to the origins of the Frango name. One theory is originated by the combination of "Fr" from Frederick’s and the "ango" from the word tango.[4] Employees trained at Frederick and Nelson were taught that the name was an acronym for FRederick And Nelson COmpany. The C was changed to a G since Franco suggested a different meaning.[citation needed] Some have also said that Frango is an acronym for FRederick And Nelson GOodness.[citation needed]

A much-repeated theory—repeated, at times even by people very close to the stores concerned—states that Frederick & Nelson originally called the chocolates Franco Mints. In the 1930s, after Frederick & Nelson's was acquired by Marshall Field's, the name was changed to Frango mints after the Spanish Civil War, when Generalísimo Franco met with Hitler, to avoid similarities to the Spanish dictator's name.[5][6] However, the brand name Frango was trademarked June 1, 1918.[7]

In 1926, the consistency of the Frango Dessert was described as flaky, requiring the use of a fork, not a spoon as you would use with ice cream. The Frango name eventually was extended to ice-cream sodas, pies and milkshakes sold at the store. It wasn't until 1927 that Ray Alden, who ran Frederick's in-store candy kitchen, developed the Frango mint meltaway chocolate. Alden's secret recipe used chocolate made from both African and South American cocoa beans as well as triple-distilled oil of Oregon peppermint and 40% local butter.[4]

Two forms[edit]

A few months after Marshall Field's agreed to buy out Frederick & Nelson's and take control of the Seattle company in 1929, the Frederick & Nelson candy makers in Seattle were summoned to Chicago to introduce Frango mints to Marshall Field's to help build slumping sales during the Great Depression. Soon, the candy kitchen at Marshall Field's had produced its own Midwestern interpretation of the Frango Chocolate recipe. Although the Northwest version still uses the original Frederick & Nelson recipe, the Marshall Field's recipe has been modified a few times.[4] This, as well as the use of different ingredients and equipment, would account for any difference in taste between the two versions.

Packaging variations[edit]

One crucial distinction between the two types of Frango chocolates is the packaging. Midwestern Frango chocolates are sold in traditional flat candy boxes, with the chocolates set in candy papers. By contrast, Northwest Frango chocolates are individually wrapped and sold in distinctive hexagon-shaped boxes.

Seattle changes[edit]

Frederick & Nelson Shuts Down[edit]

During Marshall Field's many decades of stewardship over the Frederick & Nelson chain of stores, Field's preserved the Frederick & Nelson name and regional character. However, the 1982 purchase of Marshall Field's by BATUS Retail Group (a unit of BATUS Inc.) proved ill fated for the Frederick & Nelson subsidiary. By 1986, an overstretched BATUS decided to dispose of Frederick & Nelson, selling it and Spokane, Washington based retailer The Crescent to a Washington state-based investor group. Despite this ownership turmoil, Frederick's continued to distribute Frangos, albeit under license from Field's. In 1992, continued financial difficulties led to the final closure of all Frederick's locations. By that time, Field's itself had changed hands, becoming a unit of Minneapolis-based Dayton Hudson Corporation. Seattle civic leaders quickly engineered a deal under which Dayton Hudson agreed to let Seattle's remaining full-line department store, The Bon Marché, continue to sell Frangos in the northwest.

Seattle Gourmet Foods[edit]

This solution proved highly problematic. While Frederick & Nelson was still in business, the candies were made on the 10th floor of the chain's flagship Pine Street store. After Frederick & Nelson's demise, a former Frango candymaker founded Seattle Gourmet Foods, which won a production contract with The Bon and moved candymaking to a new site. Seattle Gourmet manufactured the meltaways using much of the same equipment Frederick & Nelson used to manufacture the mints.[8]

The Bon Marché files suit[edit]

After ten years of using Seattle Gourmet Foods to manufacture the chocolates, The Bon terminated the contract in early 2003. The candymaker retaliated by producing its own line of "Frederick & Nelson Fine Chocolates," using hexagonal packaging similar to that of the traditional Frangos box. The Bon promptly sued, but Seattle Gourmet Foods countersued, claiming that the contract termination was unlawful. Late in 2004, the parties reached a settlement in which The Bon made an undisclosed payment to Seattle Gourmet Foods, in exchange for exclusive rights to the recipe, the use of hexagonal boxes, and the Frederick & Nelson and F&N names.[9]

The Bon, the Bon-Macy's, Macy's[edit]

Today the Pacific Northwest version of Frango Chocolates is sold at Macy's Northwest locations in Washington, Idaho, Montana and Oregon. This is as a result of Federated Department Stores unifying all its regional department stores under the single Macy's banner. Another local Seattle company, Seattle Chocolates, now makes the Frango chocolates for Macy's Northwest.[4]

Chicago changes[edit]

Marshall Field's candy kitchen shuts down[edit]

The Midwest version had been produced on the 13th floor of the Marshall Field's flagship State Street store from 1929 until March 1999. However, demand for the chocolates overwhelmed the in-house facility; consequently, then corporate owner Dayton-Hudson Corp. handed over the production contract for Frangos to Gertrude Hawk Chocolates in Dunmore, Pennsylvania and closed the Field's candy kitchen, letting go virtually all of the candy kitchen's employees.[10] This infuriated many Chicagoans and enraged Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley, who sought to have the, by-then iconic, chocolates made by a local Chicago company.[10]

Gertrude Hawk production process[edit]

The process begins using giant blocks of Chicago's own Blommer chocolate, melted at nearly 200 °F. Tiny rectangular molds receive the combination of milk and dark chocolate, plus a special mint oil, after the mixture is tempered to 83 °F. Air bubbles are eliminated by shaking the molds. The product is cooled via a trip through a long, refrigerated tunnel. The chocolates are then sent through an enrobing machine, where more chocolate is poured over them. The Frango mints are cooled once again, then boxed by hand, sealed, wrapped and packaged for shipment.[10]

From Marshall Field's to Macy's[edit]

In 2004, Marshall Field's and the Frango trademark were acquired by St. Louis-based May Department Store Company. Field's new owner, the May stores, refused to renew Macy's license to the Frango trademark. As a result, Macy's Northwest re-branded the Northwest version of Frango as "Frederick & Nelson, the Original" in February 2005.[4] On August 30, 2005, Macy's corporate owner, Federated Department Stores, completed its acquisition of the May Stores. As a result, a license was no longer needed for Macy's Northwest to use the Frango name. The acquisition reunited the two branches of the Frango family for the first time in two decades. Macy's Northwest promptly renamed the Northwest version of the mint meltaways as "Frango."

Return to Chicago?[edit]

Because of controversial and very public protests from former Marshall Field's customers and Chicago Mayor Daley, Federated chairman Terry J. Lundgren announced in September 2005 that Macy's would look into moving production back to Chicago.[3][11] In making the announcement, Lundgren noted that Macy's would look into "our contractual obligations" to determine if the chocolate production could be moved back to the Windy City; however, Lundgren stressed that he was not making any promises regarding moving all or part of the production back to Chicago.[12]

Unfortunately, the demand for Marshall Field's Frango mints was far greater than demand for Macy's Frangos. No longer a unique product of Chicago's famed Marshall Field's, the Macy's-branded Frangos are viewed as just another mint; at 75% off retail, sales of Frango mints under Macy's remain significantly below previous years' sales at Marshall Field's. However, this may also be due to Chicagoans' hostility to Federated, Macy's and Lundgren in particular over the demise of the Marshall Field's stores and the way the stores changed after their absorption into Macy's, becoming middle-tier retailers rather than the high-end competitor that the Marshall Field's stores had been during much of the 20th century. Macy's is considered to be a lower-tier retail chain than Federated's own top-tier retailer Bloomingdale's; the folding of the Field's stores into Macy's was seen by Chicagoans as both a demotion of a 150-year-old Chicago institution and an insult to the city itself, and critics urged a boycott of Macy's after the Macy's takeover.

In July 2009, Macy's announced that Chicago candymaker Cupid Candies would begin production of one-pound boxes of Frango mint chocolates. Cupid Candies is a 73-year-old Chicago candy maker located on the city's south side. Frango mints made by Cupid Candies will be shipped to Chicago-area Macy's stores. All other Frango candies, as well as Frango cookies, will continue to be made by Gertrude Hawk Chocolates, located in Pennsylvania. However, the contract with Cupid Candies, though cheered locally, may be a case of too little, too late for Federated as Macy's sales figures, including those for Frango mints, continued to stagnate or slump even before the Great Recession had begun.

State Street viewing kitchen reopening[edit]

Around the same time as the Cupid Candies deal, the Frango Viewing Kitchen on the seventh floor of Chicago's Macy's On State Street, which had closed in 1999 when Frango production was moved to Pennsylvania, was reopened. The kitchen allows store guests to see the enrobing process where Frango chocolate centers are covered in chocolate to create the outside layer. These enrobed chocolates are later used for sampling.[13]

Frango: only at Macy's[edit]

By 2006, The Midwest version of Frango chocolates and related items became available for sale online on the Macy's website. In the former Bon Marché stores, Macy's sells the Northwest version of the chocolates, while the Midwest version is sold elsewhere nationwide.

In the Northwest, Frango chocolates are sold in various flavors, with seasonal flavors added year round. During Christmas time, Macy's Northwest sells a stuffed Frango teddy bear and various other gift packages. In 2006, gift packages with a Frango mug, drinking chocolate, biscotti and a box of Frango chocolates were sold.

In continuing the Marshall Field's tradition, Macy's North sells the entire line of Frango products. Along with the classic mint Frangos, chocolates featuring other flavors, special edition Frangos, coffee, hot chocolate, truffles, cookies, and liqueurs are among the products sold under the Frango brand. In 2006, Macy's announced that famed Chicago cheesecake baker Eli's Cheesecake would once again produce Frango cheesecake for sale in the Macy's North region stores; Eli's had previously made Frango mint cheesecakes for Marshall Field's during the 1980s.[14]

Also as part of the seventh floor food offerings at Marshall Field's on State Street is the Frango Café, which features sandwiches and salads along with other sweet treats.[15]

Marshall Field's packaging[edit]

The Marshall Field's packaging is featured on boxes sold today by Macy's in the Midwestern region of the United States. Candies featuring the Marshall Field's signature logo are made using a variation of the 1929 recipe created by the department store. The retention of the Field's packaging in the Midwest is thought to be an attempt to regain favor with lost customers still loyal to the Marshall Field's brand; it's unclear that this strategy has worked for Macy's, although changing the packaging to feature the Macy's name instead would probably result in yet another uproar for the beleaguered chain.

Macy's packaging[edit]

Designed when Macy's was just a licensee to sell the Frango brand, its distinct logo graced the packaging of candies sold in the Pacific Northwest. After Macy's acquired the Frango brand from the owners of Marshall Field's, Macy's continued use of the logo. Candies packaged in this style use the original Frederick & Nelson recipe.

See also[edit]

  1. ^ Burling, Stacey (2006-12-08). "What's Frango? Macy's isn't saying". Philadelphia Inquirer. Retrieved 2006-12-26. [dead link]
  2. ^ Target Corporation (2004). "Forever Frango". Target Corporation. Archived from the original on 2010-12-08. Retrieved 2007-08-08.
  3. ^ a b Hart, Rob (2005-08-30). "Farewell to Field's". WGN News. Archived from the original on 2006-11-12. Retrieved 2006-12-26.
  4. ^ a b c d e Eskenazi, Stuart (2005-01-06). "Don't Call it Frango In Seattle". The Seattle Times. Retrieved 2007-01-10.
  5. ^ Greene, J. (2005), A Chicago Tradition: Marshall Field's Food and Fashion, San Francisco, California: Pomegranate Communications, Inc ISBN 978-0-7649-3320-2; ISBN 978-0-7649-3320-2
  6. ^ Bagnato, Andrew (1985-11-17). "History Lesson: From Tribune archives--The Origin Of Marshall Field's Frango Mint". The Chicago Tribune. Retrieved 2007-01-14.
  7. ^ Robert Spector, The Legend of Frango Chocolate (Kirkland, Washington: Documentary Book Publishers Corporation, 1993), cited in Alan J. Stein, Frederick & Nelson's frozen dessert (later mints) Frango is named on June 1, 1918, Essay 5771, September 23, 2004. Retrieved 26 March 2007.
  8. ^ Virgin, Bill (2003-05-08). "Recent layoffs at local companies: Seattle Gourmet Foods, Inc.". Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Archived from the original on 2010-12-08. Retrieved 2007-01-14.
  9. ^ Frey, Christine (2003-12-03). "Frangos by any other name stir up a delicious controversy". Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Retrieved 2007-01-14.
  10. ^ a b c Dolinsky, Steve (2005-09-07). "Frangos: 75 years of decadence". Archived from the original on 2010-12-08. Retrieved 2006-12-26.
  11. ^ Byron, Ellen (2005-09-21). "Marshall Field's Becomes Macy's as Era Ends". Wall Street Journal. Archived from the original on 2010-12-08. Retrieved 2006-12-27.
  12. ^ Chandler, Susan (2005-09-21). "Frangos: Mints may again be Chicago-made". The Chicago Tribune. Archived from the original on 2010-12-08. Retrieved 2007-01-14.
  13. ^ Macy's Unveils Extensive Plans for State Street Flagship Store; Retailer Plans Series of Enhancements for Legendary Department Store in Chicago, Federated Department Stores Press Release, April 27, 2006.[dead link]
  14. ^ Meyer, Gregory (2006-07-14). "Eli's wins back Frango cheesecake contract at Field's". Crain's Chicago Business. Retrieved 2007-01-14. [dead link]
  15. ^ Frango Cafe restaurant information[dead link]

External links[edit]