Cryptographic primitive

A cryptographic primitive is a simple building block in cryptography that is used to build more complex cryptographic systems. Such modules are, for example, block ciphers , cryptological hash functions , stream ciphers and cryptographically secure random number generators .

Security reductions are often possible here: It is proven that a cryptographic system / method, which is built up from these cryptographic primitives, is secure if the underlying primitives are secure.

In a second meaning, cryptographic primitive denotes an elementary arithmetic operation from which a method such as a block cipher is built up. Such a primitive can e.g. B. the bit-wise XOR operation of two data words, or the rotation of a data word by a certain number of bit positions .