Cryptography/Symmetric Ciphers
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A shared-key cipher (also called a secret-key cipher, or a one-key cipher, or a private-key cipher, or a symmetric cipher) is one that uses the same secret key to encipher as it does to decipher.
All classic ciphers are shared-key ciphers. Some modern ciphers (such as the AES) are shared-key ciphers.
A few shared-key ciphers are "reciprocal ciphers" -- they use exactly the same key and exactly the same process to decode a message as the do to encode a message. An example of a reciprocal cipher is Rot 13.
[edit] further reading
- Cryptodox: "shared-key" explains why most mechanical cipher machines use a reciprocal cipher.
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