Plaintext - wikipedia Plaintext This article is about cryptography. For the computing term meaning the storage of textual material that is ( largely ) unformatted, see plain text. This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. ( June 2011 ) In cryptography, plaintext or cleartext is unencrypted information, as opposed to information encrypted for storage or transmission. Plaintext usually means unencrypted information pending input into cryptographic algorithms, usually encryption algorithms. Cleartext usually refers to data that is transmitted or stored unencrypted ( ' in the clear ' ). Contents 1 Overview 2 Secure handling of plaintext 2.1 Web browser saved password security controversy 3 See also 4 References Overview With the advent of computing, the term plaintext expanded beyond human - readable documents to mean any data, including binary files, in a form that can be viewed or used without requiring a key or other decryption device. Information -- a message, document, file, etc. -- if to be communicated or stored in encrypted form is referred to as plaintext. Plaintext is used as input to an encryption algorithm ; the output is usually termed ciphertext, particularly when the algorithm is a cipher. Codetext is less often used, and almost always only when the algorithm involved is actually a code. Some systems use multiple layers of encryption, with the output of one encryption algorithm becoming `` plaintext '' input for the next. Secure handling of plaintext Insecure handling of plaintext can introduce weaknesses into a cryptosystem by letting an attacker bypass the cryptography altogether. Plaintext is vulnerable in use and in storage, whether in electronic or paper format. Physical security means the securing of information and its storage media from physical, attack -- for instance by someone entering a building to access papers, storage media, or computers. Discarded material, if not disposed of securely, may be a security risk. Even shredded documents and erased magnetic media might be reconstructed with sufficient effort. If plaintext is stored in a computer file, the storage media, the computer and its components, and all backups must be secure. Sensitive data is sometimes processed on computers whose mass storage is removable, in which case physical security of the removed disk is vital. In the case of securing a computer, useful ( as opposed to handwaving ) security must be physical ( e.g., against burglary, brazen removal under cover of supposed repair, installation of covert monitoring devices, etc. ), as well as virtual ( e.g., operating system modification, illicit network access, Trojan programs ). Wide availability of keydrives, which can plug into most modern computers and store large quantities of data, poses another severe security headache. A spy ( perhaps posing as a cleaning person ) could easily conceal one, and even swallow it if necessary. Discarded computers, disk drives and media are also a potential source of plaintexts. Most operating systems do not actually erase anything -- they simply mark the disk space occupied by a deleted file as ' available for use ', and remove its entry from the file system directory. The information in a file deleted in this way remains fully present until overwritten at some later time when the operating system reuses the disk space. With even low - end computers commonly sold with many gigabytes of disk space and rising monthly, this ' later time ' may be months later, or never. Even overwriting the portion of a disk surface occupied by a deleted file is insufficient in many cases. Peter Gutmann of the University of Auckland wrote a celebrated 1996 paper on the recovery of overwritten information from magnetic disks ; areal storage densities have gotten much higher since then, so this sort of recovery is likely to be more difficult than it was when Gutmann wrote. Modern hard drives automatically remap failing sectors, moving data to good sectors. This process makes information on those failing, excluded sectors invisible to the file system and normal applications. Special software, however, can still extract information from them. Some government agencies ( e.g., US NSA ) require that personnel physically pulverize discarded disk drives and, in some cases, treat them with chemical corrosives. This practice is not widespread outside government, however. Garfinkel and Shelat ( 2003 ) analyzed 158 second - hand hard drives they acquired at garage sales and the like, and found that less than 10 % had been sufficiently sanitized. The others contained a wide variety of readable personal and confidential information. See data remanence. Physical loss is a serious problem. The US State Department, Department of Defense, and the British Secret Service have all had laptops with secret information, including in plaintext, lost or stolen. Appropriate disk encryption techniques can safeguard data on misappropriated computers or media. On occasion, even when data on host systems is encrypted, media that personnel use to transfer data between systems is plaintext because of poorly designed data policy. For example, in October 2007, the HM Revenue and Customs lost CDs that contained the unencryped records of 25 million child benefit recipients in the United Kingdom. Modern cryptographic systems resist known plaintext or even chosen plaintext attacks, and so may not be entirely compromised when plaintext is lost or stolen. Older systems resisted the effects of plaintext data loss on security with less effective techniques -- such as padding and Russian copulation to obscure information in plaintext that could be easily guessed. Web browser saved password security controversy Several popular web browsers have a site password storage feature that stores user passwords in plaintext. Even though most of them initially hide the saved passwords, it is possible for someone to view all passwords in cleartext with a few mouse clicks in the browsers ' security settings options menus. In 2010, it emerged that this is the case with Firefox ( still the case as of May 2017 ), and in Aug 2013 it emerged that Google Chrome does so as well. When a software developer raised the issue with the Chrome security team, a company representative responded that Google would not change the feature, and justified the refusal by saying that hiding the passwords would ``... provide users with a false sense of security, '' and, `` That 's just not how we approach security on Chrome. '' See also Red / black concept Lightweight markup language References S. Garfinkel and A Shelat, `` Remembrance of Data Passed : A Study of Disk Sanitization Practices '', IEEE Security and Privacy, January / February 2003 ( PDF ). UK HM Revenue and Customs loses 25m records of child benefit recipients BBC Kissel, Richard ( editor ). ( February, 2011 ). NIST IR 7298 Revision 1, Glossary of Key Information Security Terms ( PDF ). National Institute of Standards and Technology. Jump up ^ Google Chrome security flaw offers unrestricted password access, The Guardian, 7 Aug 2013. Retrieved 7 Aug 2013. Jump up ^ Chrome 's insane password security strategy, ElliottKember.com, 6 Aug 2013. Retrieved 7 Aug 2013. Jump up ^ Google Chrome security representative statement, ( 2 ) ( 3 ), Y Combinator ( company ). 6 Aug 2013. Retrieved 7 Aug 2013. Retrieved from `` https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Plaintext&oldid=825933169 '' Categories : Cryptography Hidden categories : Articles needing additional references from June 2011 All articles needing additional references Talk Contents About Wikipedia Català Čeština Deutsch Euskara فارسی Bahasa Indonesia ქართული 日本 語 Polski Português Русский Simple English Slovenčina Српски / srpski Svenska Українська 粵語 中文 10 more Edit links This page was last edited on 16 February 2018, at 06 : 39. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution - ShareAlike License ; additional terms may apply. By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Wikipedia ® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization. About Wikipedia

Question: plaintext is a term that is best described as what
Answer: unencrypted information, as opposed to information encrypted for storage or transmission