Kerckhoffs' law - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Kerckhoffs' law - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In cryptography, Kerckhoffs' law (also called Kerckhoffs'assumption, axiom or principle) 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. It was reformulated (perhaps independently) by Claude Shannon as "the enemy knows the system". In that form it is called Shannon's maxim. It is widely embraced by cryptographers, in opposition to security through obscurity