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| author | Paul Kehrer <paul.l.kehrer@gmail.com> | 2017-10-11 19:49:57 +0800 |
|---|---|---|
| committer | Alex Gaynor <alex.gaynor@gmail.com> | 2017-10-11 07:49:57 -0400 |
| commit | 1aac78c4d036d20e8892f3861ea947cadf6ab739 (patch) | |
| tree | bb432229f698e613a554f23b9ec95b8ff2d20a8a /docs/glossary.rst | |
| parent | a3facfae09c881b8a1953ffd7b192debc58bb5a0 (diff) | |
| download | cryptography-1aac78c4d036d20e8892f3861ea947cadf6ab739.tar.gz cryptography-1aac78c4d036d20e8892f3861ea947cadf6ab739.tar.bz2 cryptography-1aac78c4d036d20e8892f3861ea947cadf6ab739.zip | |
let's talk about bits baby (#3956)
Diffstat (limited to 'docs/glossary.rst')
| -rw-r--r-- | docs/glossary.rst | 9 |
1 files changed, 9 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/docs/glossary.rst b/docs/glossary.rst index 3a1280a6..df327605 100644 --- a/docs/glossary.rst +++ b/docs/glossary.rst @@ -85,5 +85,14 @@ Glossary prefix ``xn--``. To create an A-label from a unicode domain string use a library like `idna`_. + bits + A bit is binary value -- a value that has only two possible states. + Typically binary values are represented visually as 0 or 1, but + remember that their actual value is not a printable character. A byte + on modern computers is 8 bits and represents 256 possible values. In + cryptographic applications when you see something say it requires a 128 + bit key, you can calculate the number of bytes by dividing by 8. 128 + divided by 8 is 16, so a 128 bit key is a 16 byte key. + .. _`hardware security module`: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardware_security_module .. _`idna`: https://pypi.org/project/idna/ |