Cryptography (or ''cryptology''; from Greek , "hidden, secret"; and , ''graphein'', "writing", or , ''-logia'', "study", respectively) is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of third parties (called adversaries). More generally, it is about constructing and analyzing protocols that overcome the influence of adversaries and which are related to various aspects in information security such as data confidentiality, data integrity, and authentication. Modern cryptography intersects the disciplines of mathematics, computer science, and electrical engineering. Applications of cryptography include ATM cards, computer passwords, and electronic commerce.

Cryptology prior to the modern age was almost synonymous with ''encryption'', the conversion of information from a readable state to apparent nonsense. The sender retained the ability to decrypt the information and therefore avoid unwanted persons being able to read it. 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 follows a strongly scientific approach, and designs cryptographic algorithms around computational hardness assumptions, making such algorithms hard to break by an adversary. Such systems are not unbreakable in theory but it is infeasible to do so by any practical means. These schemes are therefore computationally secure. There exist information-theoretically secure schemes that cannot be broken—an example is the one-time pad—but these schemes are more difficult to implement than the theoretically breakable but computationally secure mechanisms.

Cryptology-related technology has raised a number of legal issues. In the United Kingdom, additions to the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 requires a suspected criminal to hand over their encryption key if asked by law enforcement. Otherwise the user will face a criminal charge. The Electronic Frontier Foundation is involved in a case in the Supreme Court of the United States, which will assertain if requiring suspected criminals to provide their encryption keys to law enforcement is unconstitutional. The EFF is arguing that this is a violation of the right of not being forced to incriminate oneself, as given in the fifth amendment.

Terminology

Until modern times cryptography referred almost exclusively to ''encryption'', which is the process of converting ordinary information (called plaintext) into unintelligible gibberish (called ciphertext). 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 parameter (ideally known only to the communicants) for a specific message exchange context. 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, 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. English is more flexible than several other languages in which ''cryptology'' (done by cryptologists) is always used in the second sense above. In the English Wikipedia the general term used for the entire field is ''cryptography'' (done by cryptographers).

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

History of cryptography and cryptanalysis

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

The earliest forms of secret writing required little more than local pen and paper analogs, as 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 BC), but this may have been done for the amusement of literate observers rather than as a way of concealing information. Cryptography is recommended in the Kama Sutra as a way for lovers to communicate without inconvenient discovery.

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). 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, concealed a message—a tattoo on a slave's shaved head—under the regrown hair. Another Greek method was developed by Polybius (now called the "Polybius Square"). More modern examples of steganography include the use of invisible ink, microdots, and digital watermarks to conceal information.

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, 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''), in which described the first cryptanalysis techniques.

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. 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.

Although frequency analysis is a powerful and general technique against many ciphers, encryption has still been often effective in practice; 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 '20s and during World War II. The ciphers implemented by better quality examples of these machine designs brought about a substantial increase in cryptanalytic difficulty after WWI.

The computer era

The development of digital computers and electronics after WWII 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,; 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 no absolute proofs that a cryptographic technique is secure (but see one-time pad); at best, there are proofs that some techniques are secure ''if'' some computational problem is difficult to solve, or this or that assumption about implementation or practical use is met.

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, thus when specifying key lengths, the required key lengths are similarly advancing. 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.

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 as 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 computing).

Modern cryptography

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

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. The modern study of symmetric-key ciphers relates mainly to the study of block ciphers and stream ciphers and to their applications. A block cipher is, in a sense, a modern embodiment of Alberti's polyalphabetic cipher: block ciphers take as input a block of plaintext and a key, and output a block of ciphertext of the same size. Since messages are almost always longer than a single block, some method of knitting together successive blocks is required. Several have been developed, some with better security in one aspect or another than others. They are the modes of operation and must be carefully considered when using a block cipher in a cryptosystem.

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). 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 to e-mail privacy and secure remote access. Many other block ciphers have been designed and released, with considerable variation in quality. Many have been thoroughly broken, such as FEAL.

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. 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 U.S. 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 U.S. 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." Thus, a hash function design competition is underway and meant to select a new U.S. national standard, to be called SHA-3, by 2012.

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.

Public-key cryptography

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 straight 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.

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. 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. The historian David Kahn described public-key cryptography as "the most revolutionary new concept in the field since polyalphabetic substitution emerged in the Renaissance".

In public-key cryptosystems, the public key may be freely distributed, while its paired private key must remain secret. The ''public key'' is typically used for encryption, while the ''private'' or ''secret key'' is used for decryption. Diffie and Hellman showed that public-key cryptography was possible by presenting the Diffie–Hellman key exchange protocol.

In 1978, Ronald Rivest, Adi Shamir, and Len Adleman invented RSA, another public-key system.

In 1997, it finally became publicly known that asymmetric key cryptography had been invented by James H. Ellis at GCHQ, a British intelligence organization, and that, in the early 1970s, both the Diffie–Hellman and RSA algorithms had been previously developed (by Malcolm J. Williamson and Clifford Cocks, respectively).

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.

In addition to encryption, public-key cryptography can be used to implement digital signature schemes. A digital signature is reminiscent of an ordinary signature; they both have the characteristic that they are 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.).

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 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.

Cryptanalysis

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. 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. 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). 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 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. 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, 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

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.

Cryptosystems

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 systems, signcryption systems, etc. Some more 'theoretical' cryptosystems include interactive proof systems, (like zero-knowledge proofs,), systems for secret sharing, etc.

Until recently, most security properties of most cryptosystems were demonstrated using empirical techniques, or using ad hoc reasoning. Recently, 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

Prohibitions

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 relaxed many of these. In China, a license is still required to use cryptography. 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.

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. 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. As a result, export controls came to be seen to be an impediment to commerce and to research.

Export controls

In the 1990s, there were several challenges to US export regulations of cryptography. One involved Philip Zimmermann's Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) encryption program; it was released in the US, together with its source code, and found its way onto the Internet in June 1991. After a complaint by RSA Security (then called RSA Data Security, Inc., or RSADSI), Zimmermann was criminally investigated by the Customs Service and the FBI for several years. No charges were ever filed, however. Also, Daniel 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.

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. Cryptography exports from the US are now much less strictly regulated than in the past as a consequence of a major relaxation in 2000; there are no longer very many restrictions on key sizes in US-exported mass-market software. In practice today, since the relaxation in US export restrictions, and because almost every personal computer connected to the Internet, everywhere in the world, includes US-sourced web browsers such as Firefox or Internet Explorer, almost every Internet user worldwide has access to quality cryptography (i.e., when using sufficiently long keys with properly operating and unsubverted software, etc.) in their browsers; examples are Transport Layer Security or SSL stack. The Mozilla Thunderbird and Microsoft Outlook E-mail client programs similarly can connect to IMAP or POP servers 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.

NSA involvement

Another contentious issue connected to cryptography in the United States is the influence of the National Security Agency on cipher development and policy. 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. DES was designed to be resistant to differential cryptanalysis, a powerful and general cryptanalytic technique known to NSA and IBM, that became publicly known only when it was rediscovered in the late 1980s. According to Steven Levy, IBM rediscovered differential cryptanalysis, but kept the technique secret at NSA's request. The technique became publicly known only when Biham and Shamir re-rediscovered 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 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 was then classified (the cipher, called Skipjack, though it was declassified in 1998 long after the Clipper initiative lapsed). The secret cipher caused concerns that 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.

Digital rights management

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, American 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. 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. Both Alan Cox (longtime number 2 in Linux kernel development) and Professor 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 triggered by the perceived impact of such notices on fair use and free speech.

See also

Books on cryptography

:Category:Cryptographers

Encyclopedia of Cryptography and Security

Intypedia

List of cryptographers

List of important publications in networks and security

List of multiple discoveries (see "RSA")

List of unsolved problems in computer science

Outline of cryptography

Strong secrecy, a term used in cryptography

References

Further reading

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. CyrpTool 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.

Handbook of Applied Cryptography by A. J. Menezes, P. C. van Oorschot, and S. A. Vanstone CRC Press, (PDF download available), somewhat more mathematical than Schneier's Applied Cryptography.

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). *, 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.

External links

Free on-line course in cryptography by Christof Paar, two semesters in English and German (click on "On-line course"), site also contains a comprehensive set of cryptography slides

DNA computing and cryptology: the future for Basel in Switzerland?

Crypto Glossary and Dictionary of Technical Cryptography

Attack/Prevention Resource for Cryptography Whitepapers, Tools, Videos, and Podcasts.

Handbook of Applied Cryptography by A. J. Menezes, P. C. van Oorschot, and S. A. Vanstone (PDF download available), somewhat more mathematical than Schneier's book.

NSA's CryptoKids.

Overview and Applications of Cryptology by the CrypTool Team; PDF; 3.8 MB—July 2008

''RSA Laboratories' frequently asked questions about today's cryptography''

sci.crypt mini-FAQ

GCHQ: Britain's Most Secret Intelligence Agency

A Course in Cryptography by Raphael Pass and Abhi Shelat. A complete course in cryptography offered at Cornell in the form of lecture notes.

Category:Banking technology Category:Formal sciences Category:Mathematical science occupations

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Coordinates	6°01′0″N116°09′0″N
Name
Background	solo_singer
Birth name	Ayako Tsukada (塚田綾子)
Alias	Cream (久里夢)
Birth date	September 10, 1985
Origin	Kiyota, Sapporo, Hokkaidō, Japan
Instruments	Singing
Genre	Pop, rock, rhythm and blues, punk rock
Occupation	Singer, songwriter, model
Years active	2003–present
Label	FLME (2003-2004)WEED (2005)Giza Studio (2006-2009) avex trax (2009-)
Website	http://www.avexnet.or.jp/kamikiaya/
Past members	}}

is a Japanese singer-songwriter. Her style ranges from pop, rock to rhythm and blues. She currently resides in Osaka, and is currently signed with Tokyo-based AVEX recording label. She speaks moderate Chinese, and because of this, she has a notable fanbase in China.

Biography

Kamiki learned to play the piano when she was 4 years old. In junior high school, she began singing live. Influenced by punk rock, she also learned how to play the guitar.

In 2005, Kamiki released her two mini-albums "Constellation" and "Rock On" from the independent record label Weed Records.

Kamiki's singing career was mainly active in Osaka, where she garnered positive results. Her voice was so full of force that it was part of her reputation. She made appearances in music and fashion magazines, which caught people's attention.

In 2006, Kamiki signed on with Giza Studio and released her first major label single "Communication Break" on March 15. On April 12, her second single "Pierrot" was released. The song was respectively written and composed by B'z members Koshi Inaba and Tak Matsumoto, although the lyrics in Kamiki's version were slightly modified. It was released on the same day as the B'z single "ゆるぎないものひとつ" (Yuruginaimono Hitotsu), which contained "Pierrot" as its 2nd Beat (B-side). The single reached 9th place on the Oricon charts. Her third single "Mou Kimidake-wo Hanashitari-wa Shinai" peaked at the 11th place, and her first full album "Secret Code" debuted at 5th place. In order to promote Secret Code's release, Kamiki held two mini-concerts. One was as "Black Kamiki" and was performed at Tower Records in Shibuya. The other (later on the same day), was as "White Aya" and was performed at HMV in Shibuya. Entrance was free, provided that you had purchased Secret Code at the corresponding store.

Early 2007, Kamiki was one of the winners of the 21st Japan Gold Disc Award's New Artist of the Year.

In 2009, she moved the avex trax label and before leaving GIZA Studio, she released a best album titled, "Greatest Best" and she released her 12th single named "WBX (W-Boiled Extreme)" on November 11.

In 2010, her fourth album, "INDIVIDUAL EMOTION" was released on January 27, whereas the one of the track, "The Light" was released as a PV. Then on July 14, her 13th single, "Revolver" was released, then shortly after on August 11, she released her mini-album, "Gloriosa".

Discography

Singles

Single #	Information	Sales
		*Released: May 21, 2003	*Studio Album: N/A	*Oricon Top 200 Weekly Peak: /
		*Released: March 15, 2006	Secret Code (Aya Kamiki album)>Secret Code	*Oricon Top 200 Weekly Peak: #48
	align="left"	*Released: April 12, 2006	Secret Code (Aya Kamiki album)>Secret Code	*Oricon Top 200 Weekly Peak: #9
		*Released: May 31, 2006	Secret Code (Aya Kamiki album)>Secret Code	*Oricon Top 200 Weekly Peak: #11
		*Released: November 1, 2006	*Studio Album: Ashita no Tame ni ~Forever More~	*Oricon Top 200 Weekly Peak: #19
		*Released: May 23, 2007	*Studio Album: Ashita no Tame ni ~Forever More~	*Oricon Top 200 Weekly Peak: #24
		*Released: July 25, 2007	*Studio Album: Ashita no Tame ni ~Forever More~	*Oricon Top 200 Weekly Peak: #24
	align="left"	*Released: March 5, 2008	Are You Happy Now (Aya Kamiki album)>Are you happy now?	*Oricon Top 200 Weekly Peak: #28
		*Released: June 18, 2008	Are You Happy Now (Aya Kamiki album)>Are you happy now?	*Oricon Top 200 Weekly Peak: #34
	align="left"	*Released: August 6, 2008	Are You Happy Now (Aya Kamiki album)>Are you happy now?	*Oricon Top 200 Weekly Peak: #35
		*Released: December 3, 2008	*Studio Album: AYA KAMIKI Greatest Best	*Oricon Top 200 Weekly Peak: #42
	''as Kamiki Aya w TAKUYA''		*Released: November 11, 2009	*Studio Album: Individual Emotion	*Oricon Top 200 Weekly Peak: #8
	align="left"	*Released: July 14, 2010	Gloriosa (Kamiki Aya)>Gloriosa	*Oricon Top 200 Weekly Peak: #34

EPs

# ''Constellation'' ''(Indies)'' (May 25, 2005) # ''Rock On'' ''(Indies)'' (September 21, 2005) # ''Gloriosa'' (August 11, 2010) # ''EVILÄLIVE'' (March 9, 2011)

Studio albums

{|class="wikitable" ! width="30" rowspan="2"| Year ! width="240" rowspan="2"| Album details ! colspan="1"| Chart positions ! width="180" rowspan="2" | Informations !align="left" rowspan="2"|Sales |- !style="width:3em;font-size:75%;"| JP |- |align="center"| 2006 | ''Secret Code''

Released: July 12, 2006

Label: GIZA studio

Formats: CD, digital download

|align="center"| 5 |

Secret Code is Kamiki Aya's first full length album. Available in one edition, CD only.

|align="center"|65,004copies sold |- |align="center"| 2007 | ''Ashita no Tame ni ~Forever More~''

Released: October 10, 2007

Label: GIZA studio

Formats: CD, digital download

|align="center"| 8 |

Ashita no Tame ni ~Forever More~ is Kamiki Aya's second album. Available in two editions.

|align="center"|24,572 copies sold |- |align="center"| 2008 | ''Are you happy now?''

Released: September 10, 2008

Label: GIZA studio

Formats: CD, digital download

|align="center"| 10 |

Are you happy now? is Kamiki Aya's third album. Available in three editions.

|align="center"|18,006copies sold |- |align="center"| 2010 | ''AYA KAMIKI Greatest Best''

Released: January 27, 2010

Label: GIZA Studio

Formats: CD, Digital Download

|align="center"| 30 |

Last album best under label GIZA studio of Aya Kamiki.

|align="center"|8,340copies sold |- |align="center"| 2010 | ''Individual Emotion''

Released: January 27, 2010

Label: avex trax

Formats: CD, 2 CDs, Digital Download

|align="center"| 23 |

Individual Emotion is her first album by the label Avex Trax.

|align="center"|9,921copies sold |- |align="center"| 2011 | ''THE FINAL JOURNEY''

Released: September 7, 2011

Label: avex trax

Formats: 2 CDs, 2 CDs+DVD, Digital Download

|align="center"| / |

Commemoration album in the music industry for her 5th years as a major artist. Latest album before leaving avex trax.

|align="center"|/ copies sold |}

DVD

# AYA KAMIKI FIRST LIVE (2 May 2007) # AYA KAMIKI MUSIC VIDEO#1 (7 November 2007) # THE FINAL JOURNEY -FINAL EDITION- (7 September 2011)

References

External links

Aya Kamiki official Avex trax site

Aya Kamiki official GIZA studio site

Aya Kamiki official Agency site

Category:Ainu people Category:Female rock singers Category:Japanese female singers Category:1985 births Category:Living people Category:People from Sapporo

bar:Aya Kamiki fr:Aya Kamiki ko:가미키 아야 ja:上木彩矢 no:Aya Kamiki pt:Aya Kamiki tl:Aya Kamiki zh:上木彩矢

Coordinates	6°01′0″N116°09′0″N
Name	Allan Sherman
Birth date	November 30, 1924
Birth place	Chicago, Illinois, United States
Dead	dead
Death date	November 20, 1973
Death place	Los Angeles, California, United States
Occupation	Comedy writer, television producer, singer, actor
Yearsactive	1951-1973
Death cause	Emphysema }}

Allan Sherman (November 30, 1924 – November 20, 1973) was an American comedy writer and television producer who became famous as a song parodist in the early 1960s. His first album, ''My Son, the Folk Singer'' (1962), became the fastest-selling record album up to that time. His biggest hit single was "Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah", a comic novelty in which a boy describes his summer camp experiences to the tune of Ponchielli's ''Dance of the Hours''.

TV writer and producer

Sherman created a game show, which he called "I Know a Secret." TV producer Mark Goodson used Sherman's idea and turned it into ''I've Got a Secret'', which ran on CBS from 1952 to 1967. Rather than paying him for the concept, Mark Goodson-Bill Todman Productions made Sherman the show's producer. Sherman was reported to be warm and kindhearted to all who worked for him. But sparks often flew between Sherman and anyone who was in a position to try to restrain his creativity. As producer of ''I've Got a Secret'', which was broadcast live, he showed a fondness for large scale stunts that had the potential to teeter on the brink of disaster. He once released 100 bunny rabbits onstage as an Easter surprise for the Madison Square Boys Club, whose members were seated in the studio. The boys were invited to come up onstage to collect their prize. Although the resultant melee made a good story, it did not necessarily make for good TV. The relationship between Mark Goodson-Bill Todman and Sherman became strained to the breaking point when he finally fought to execute an idea that was destined to fall flat. His plan was to have Tony Curtis teach the panel how to play some of the games he had played as a child growing up in New York City. The problems manifested themselves when it became obvious that Tony Curtis had never actually played any of the games that Sherman had brought the props for. The situation might have been salvaged had the props worked as planned, but they did not. The handkerchief parachute failed to open and land gracefully and the spool "tank" which was propelled by rubber band moved painfully slowly. The spot, which aired June 11, 1958, was a disaster and Sherman was fired as producer. His dismissal did not, however, prevent Mark Goodson-Bill Todman from bringing Sherman back many times as a guest on their shows in subsequent years after he achieved celebrity status following the release of his albums.

Sherman also produced a short-lived 1954 game show, ''What's Going On?'' which was technologically ambitious, with studio guests interacting with multiple live cameras in remote locations. In 1961 he produced a daytime game show for Al Singer Productions called ''Your Surprise Package'' which aired on CBS with host George Fenneman.

Song parodies

In 1951 Sherman recorded a 78-rpm single with veteran singer Sylvia Froos which included the songs "A Satchel and a Seck", parodying "A Bushel and a Peck" from ''Guys and Dolls'', and "Jake's Song". The single sold poorly and when Sherman wrote his autobiography, he did not make reference to it. Later, he found that the song parodies he performed to amuse his friends and family were taking on a life of their own. Sherman lived in the Brentwood section of West Los Angeles next door to Harpo Marx, who invited him to perform his song parodies at parties attended by Marx's show-biz friends. After one party, George Burns phoned a record executive and persuaded him to sign Sherman to a contract. The result was a long playing album of these parodies, entitled ''My Son, the Folk Singer'', which was released in 1962. It sold over one million copies, and was awarded a gold disc. The album was so successful that it was quickly followed by ''My Son, the Celebrity'', which ended with "Shticks of One and Half a Dozen of the Other," fragments of song parodies including Robert Burns': "Do not make a stingy sandwich, pile the cold cuts high;/Customers should see salami comin' thru the rye" and "All day, all night Cary Grant", a takeoff on "Marianne".

In 1962, capitalizing on his success, Jubilee Records re-released Sherman's 1951 single on the album ''More Folk Songs by Allan Sherman and His Friends'', which was a compilation of material by various Borscht Belt comedians, such as Sylvia Froos, Fyvush Finkle and Lee Tully, along with the Sherman material.

As suggested by the albums' titles, Sherman's first two LPs were mainly reworkings of old folk songs to infuse them with Jewish humor. His first minor hit was "Sarah Jackman" (pronounced "Jockman"), a takeoff of "Frère Jacques" in which he and a woman (Christine Nelson) exchange family gossip ("Sarah Jackman, Sarah Jackman, How's by you? How's by you? How's by you the family? How's your sister Emily?" etc.) The popularity of "Sarah Jackman" (as well as the album "My Son the Folksinger") was enhanced after President Kennedy was spotted in a hotel lobby singing the song. By his peak with ''My Son, the Nut'' in 1963, however, Sherman had broadened both his subject matter and his choice of parody material and begun to appeal to a larger audience.

Sherman wrote his parody lyrics in collaboration with Lou Busch. A few of the Sherman/Busch songs are completely original creations, featuring original music as well as lyrics, rather than new lyrics applied to an existing melody. The Sherman/Busch originals – notably "Go to Sleep, Paul Revere" and "Peyton Place" – are novelty songs, showing genuine melodic originality as well as deft lyrics.

However, Sherman had trouble in getting permission to record for profit from some of the well-known composers and lyricists, who did not tolerate parodies or satires of their melodies and lyrics, including Irving Berlin, Richard Rodgers, George and Ira Gershwin, Alan Jay Lerner, and Frederick Loewe, as well as the estates of Lorenz Hart, Oscar Hammerstein, Kurt Weill, and Bertolt Brecht, which prevented him from releasing parodies or satires of their songs. In the early 1960s, Sherman and Busch wrote a musical called "Fairfax Lady", a parody of ''My Fair Lady'', without Alan Jay Lerner's approval. However, Lerner and Sherman agreed to a settlement, which permitted "Fairfax Lady" to be performed under strict conditions: it could only play at one theater in the Fairfax district of Los Angeles, no photos or visual record of the show be made, and no cast album could be recorded. The musical received mixed reviews. A previously unreleased recording of "Fairfax Lady", featuring Sherman's narration and Lou Busch at the piano, was included in the boxed set ''My Son, the Box''.

Although Sherman believed that all the songs parodied on ''My Son, the Folk Singer'' were in the public domain, two of them, "Matilda" and "Water Boy" – parodied as "My Zelda" and "Seltzer Boy", respectively – were actually under copyright, and Sherman was sued for copyright infringement.

In 1963's ''My Son, The Nut'', Sherman's pointed parodies of classical and popular tunes dealt with automation in the workplace ("Automation," to the tune of "Fascination"), space travel ("Eight Foot Two, Solid Blue," to "Five Foot Two, Eyes of Blue"), the exodus from the city to the suburbs ("Here's to the Crabgrass," to the tune of "English Country Garden"), and his own bloated figure ("Hail to Thee, Fat Person," which claims his obesity was a public service similar to the Marshall Plan).

A Top 40 hit

One track from ''My Son, The Nut'', a spoof of summer camp entitled "Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh", became a surprise novelty hit, reaching No.2 on the national Billboard Hot 100 chart for three weeks in late summer 1963. The lyrics were sung to the tune of one segment of Ponchielli's "Dance of the Hours", familiar to the public because of its use in the Walt Disney film ''Fantasia''. That December, Sherman's "The Twelve Gifts of Christmas" single appeared on Billboard's separate Christmas chart. Sherman had one other Top 40 hit, a 1965 take-off on the Petula Clark hit "Downtown" called "Crazy Downtown", which spent one week at #40. Two other Sherman singles charted in the lower regions of the Billboard 100: an updated "Hello Mudduh, Hello Fadduh" (#59 in 1964), and "The Drinking Man's Diet" (#98 in 1965). He "Bubbled Under" with "The End Of A Symphony", reaching No.113 in 1964, spotlighting Arthur Fiedler's Boston Pops Orchestra.

The songs on Sherman's next album ''My Name Is Allan'' (1965) were thematically connected: except for a couple of original novelty songs with music by Sherman and Busch, all the songs on the album are parodies of songs that had won, or were nominated for, the Academy Award for Best Song. They included "That Old Black Magic," "Secret Love," "The Continental,""Chim Chim Cheree", and "Call Me Irresponsible." The cover of the album bore a childhood photograph of Sherman. That, and the album's title, were references to Barbra Streisand's album ''My Name is Barbra'', released earlier that year, which featured a cover photograph of the singer as a young girl.

During his brief heyday, Sherman's parodies were so popular that he had at least one contemporary imitator: ''My Son the Copycat'' was an album of song parodies performed by Stanley Ralph Ross, co-written by Ross and Bob Arbogast. Lest there be any doubt of whom Ross is copying, his album's cover bears a crossed-out photo of Sherman. One of the songs on this album is a fat man's lament, "I'm Called Little Butterball", parodying "I'm Called Little Buttercup" from Gilbert and Sullivan's operetta ''HMS Pinafore''. Sherman would later parody this same song as "Little Butterball" – with the same subject matter – on his album ''Allan in Wonderland''. The song may have had more poignancy for Sherman, as he, unlike Stanley Ross, was genuinely overweight. Sherman also parodied Gilbert and Sullivan's "Titwillow" from ''The Mikado'', in the song "The Bronx Bird-Watcher" (on ''My Son, the Celebrity''), as well as several other Gilbert and Sullivan songs.

Later work

At the height of his popularity in 1965, Sherman published an autobiography, ''A Gift of Laughter'', and, for a short period at least, Sherman was culturally ubiquitous. He sang on and guest-hosted ''The Tonight Show'', was involved in the production of Bill Cosby's first three albums, appeared in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, and sang "The Dropouts' March" on the March 6, 1964, edition of the NBC-TV satirical program ''That Was The Week That Was''.

Also in 1964, Sherman narrated his own version of Prokofiev's ''Peter and the Wolf'' in a live concert at Tanglewood with the Boston Pops under Arthur Fiedler. The concert, which was released as the album ''Peter and the Commissar'', also included "Variations on 'How Dry I Am'", with Sherman as conductor, and "The End of a Symphony". In "Variations", Fiedler was the guest soloist, providing solo hiccups. In 2004, Collector's Choice reissued the complete RCA Victor album on CD.

Sherman's later albums grew more pointedly satirical and less light-hearted, skewering protesting students ("The Rebel"), consumer debt ("A Waste of Money", based on "A Taste of Honey"), and the generation gap ("Crazy Downtown" and "Pop Hates the Beatles").

Sherman was often tapped to produce specialty song parodies for corporations. An album of six paper-cup and vending machine related songs, titled ''Music to Dispense With'', was created for the Container Division of the Scott Paper Company for distribution to its vendors and customers. It consisted of the tracks ''Makin' Coffee'', ''Vending Machines'', ''There Are Cups'', ''That's How The Change Is Made'', ''The Wonderful Tree In The Forest'' and ''Scott Cups''.

Sherman also created a group of eight "public education" radio spots for Encron carpet fibers, singing their praises to the tunes of old public-domain songs. Entitled ''Allan Sherman Pours It On For Carpets Made With Encron Polyester'', it featured an introduction by Sherman and comprised the tracks "Encron Is A Brand New Fiber" (to the tune of "Shine On, Harvest Moon"), "Put Them All Together, They Spell Encron" (to the tune of Eddy Arnold's "M-O-T-H-E-R"), "There's A Fiber Called Encron" (to the tune of William H. Hill's "There is a Tavern in the Town"), "Encron Alive, Alive-O" (to the tune of "Molly Malone"), "Encron's The Name", "Why They Call It Encron" (to the tune of "Let Me Call You Sweetheart"), "Encron, Encron" (to the tune of "Daisy Bell") and "Encron Is A Great New Fiber" (to the tune of "Take Me to the Fair").

Out of the limelight

Sherman's career success was short-lived: after peaking in 1963, his popularity declined rather quickly. After the JFK assassination, impersonator Vaughn Meader vowed to never again do a Kennedy impression, and perhaps because of this ominous shadow – Meader was a very popular parody impressionist of the day – and the resulting reluctance to book such acts, the public saw less of Sherman's type of comedy. By 1965, Sherman had released two albums that did not make the Top 50 and in 1966, Warner Brothers dropped him from the label. His last album for the company, ''Togetherness'', was released in 1967 to poor reviews and poorer sales. All of Sherman's previous releases had been recorded in front of a live studio audience – or in the case of ''Live, Hoping You Are The Same'', recorded during a Las Vegas performance – but ''Togetherness'' was not, and the lack of an audience and their response affected the result, as did the nondescript backup singers and studio orchestra.

In 1969, Sherman wrote the script and lyrics – but not the music, which was written by Albert Hague – for ''The Fig Leaves Are Falling'', a flop Broadway musical that lasted only four performances in 1969, despite direction by George Abbott and a cast that included Barry Nelson, Dorothy Loudon and David Cassidy. Still creative, in 1973 Sherman published the controversial ''The Rape of the A*P*E*'', which detailed his point of view on American Puritanism and the sexual revolution.

In 1971, Sherman was the voice of Dr. Seuss's "The Cat in the Hat" for the television special. He also did voice work for ''Dr. Seuss on the Loose'', his last project before his death.

Death

Late in his life Sherman drank and ate heavily which resulted in a dangerous weight gain; he later developed diabetes and struggled with lung disease. In 1966, his wife Dee filed for divorce and received full custody of their son and daughter.

Sherman lived on unemployment benefits for a time and moved into the Motion Picture Home near Calabasas, California for a short time in order to lose weight. He died of emphysema at home in West Hollywood ten days before his 49th birthday. He is entombed in Culver City, California's Hillside Memorial Park Cemetery.

Legacy

Sherman was the inspiration for a new generation of developing parodists such as "Weird Al" Yankovic, who pays homage to Sherman on the cover of his first LP. Sherman's hit song, "Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh" has been translated into other languages. In one notable example, the Dutch-Swedish poet Cornelis Vreeswijk translated the song loosely into Swedish as "Brev från kolonien" (Letter from the colonies), which reached fourth on the Swedish popular music chart Svensktoppen in the summer of 1965 and is still popular in Sweden today.

A ''Best of Allan Sherman'' CD was released in 1990, and a boxed set of most of his songs was released in 2005 under the title ''My Son, the Box''. In 1992 a musical revue of his songs titled ''Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah'' ran for over a year off-off-Broadway; other productions ran Off-Broadway for four months in 2001 and toured in 2003. A children's book based on the song ''Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh!'', with illustrations by Syd Hoff, was published in 2004.

On March 14, 2006, National Public Radio profiled Sherman on ''All Things Considered''.

In 2010, eight of Allan Sherman's Warner Brothers albums were individually released on CD: My Son, The Folk Singer; My Son, The Celebrity; My Son, The Nut; Allan in Wonderland; For Swingin' Livers Only; My Name is Allan; Live! (Hoping You Are The Same); and Togetherness.

Miscellany

Sherman is often confused with Tin Pan Alley songwriter Al Sherman, but the two men were not related. Both men, however, had sons named Robert: Allan's son Robert was the inspiration and subject of Allan's signature song, "Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh", while Al Sherman also fathered a son named "Robert". Both Allan and Al died in 1973.

The American release of the British comedy "Old Mother Riley Meets the Vampire" was retitled "My Son the Vampire", with the title credits song performed by Sherman.

Sherman's song "Rat Fink" was covered by punk rock band The Misfits as "Ratt Fink", on their 1979 single "Night of the Living Dead". It was also covered by Ex-Misfits guitarist Bobby Steele by his band The Undead. Sherman wrote the song as a parody of "Rag Mop", originally performed by Johnnie Lee Wills and popularized by The Ames Brothers in 1950.

In the "Three Gays of the Condo" episode of ''The Simpsons'', "Weird Al" Yankovic makes a guest appearance. When Homer asks Yankovic if he got the two songs he recorded and sent in, Yankovic replies that he did. When Homer asks which he liked better, Yankovic replies, "They were pretty much the same, Homer." Homer then mutters angrily, "Yeah, like you and Allan Sherman." Another reference to Sherman came in the episode "Marge Be Not Proud" when Bart hid an answering machine tape in a copy of his Camp Granada album – "where no one would ever listen to it."

The group Capitol Steps used "Hello Mullah Hello Faddah" as a parody in ''Fools On The Hill (Songs of 1992)''.

The lyrics of "Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh" included a reference to a fictional character called "Leonard Skinner". This was also the name of a PE instructor at Robert E Lee High School in Jacksonville, Florida, the tongue-in-cheek inspiration for the former students of the school eventually naming their band "Lynyrd Skynyrd". Leonard Skinner died at 77 on September 20, 2010.

In the movie "Funny People" directed by Judd Apatow, the LP "My Son, the Nut" is framed and hanging on the wall in the apartment shared by Seth Rogen, Jonah Hill and Jason Schwartzman.

Works

Discography

''My Son, the Folk Singer'' (1962)

''More Folk Songs by Allan Sherman and His Friends'' (1962) [pirated album]

''My Son, the Celebrity'' (1963)

''My Son, the Nut'' (1963)

''Allan in Wonderland'' (1964)

''Peter and the Commissar'' (1964)

''For Swingin' Livers Only'' (1964) (a play on Sinatra's album title ''Songs for Swingin' Lovers'')

''My Name is Allan'' (1965) (a play on Streisand's album title ''My Name is Barbra'')

''Live!! (Hoping You Are The Same)'' (1966)

''Togetherness'' (1967)

''Best of Allan Sherman'' (Posthumous, 1979)

''My Son, The Greatest'' (Posthumous, 1990)

''My Son, The Box'' (Posthumous, 2005)

Musical theatre

''The Fig Leaves Are Falling'' (1969) – musical – lyricist and book-writer

*Songs: "All Is Well in Larchmont," "Lillian," "All of My Laughter," "Give Me a Cause," "Today I Saw a Rose," "We," "For Our Sake," "Light One Candle," "Oh, Boy," "The Fig Leaves Are Falling," "For the Rest of My Life," "I Like It," "Broken Heart," "Old Fashioned Song," "Lillian, Lillian, Lillian," "Did I Ever Really Live?" The music was composed by Albert Hague.

See also

Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah! (musical review & children's book)

References

Bibliography

''Instant Status'' (or ''Up Your Image'') (G.P. Putnam & Sons, 1964) (tear-out pages of celebrity thank you letters you can address to yourself and leave around your home or office to impress people)

''I Can't Dance!'' (children's picture book, illustrated by Syd Hoff) (Harper & Row, 1964)

''A Gift of Laughter: The Autobiography of Allan Sherman'' (Atheneum, 1965)

''The Rape of the A*P*E* – The Official History of the Sex Revolution 1945–1973: The Obscening of America. An R*S*V*P* Document'' (Playboy Press, 1973) ISBN 0-87216-453-5

*The title page notes that "APE" stands for "American Puritan Ethic" and "RSVP" for "Redeeming Social Value Pornography"

''Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah'', (children's picture book) (Dutton Books, 2004) ISBN 0-525-46942-7

Notes

External links

[ Allmusic Guide Entry for Allan Sherman]

Allan Sherman: The Internet Site

Complete Discography

Allan Sherman discography

Review of ''Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh'', the Allan Sherman Musical Revue

Allan Sherman's Gravesite

Category:American satirists Category:American male singers Category:Songwriters from Illinois Category:American television producers Category:Parodists Category:American voice actors Category:Parody musicians Category:American entertainment industry businesspeople Category:American comedians Category:Jewish comedians Category:Jewish American musicians Category:Jubilee Records artists Category:RCA Victor artists Category:Deaths from emphysema Category:1924 births Category:1973 deaths Category:Grammy Award winners Category:Fairfax High School (Los Angeles) alumni Category:People from Chicago, Illinois Category:Place of birth missing Category:American Jews

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