Are Encryption and Cipher different things?

Question

I heard some time that encryption and cipher are not the same thing, if so, what's the difference?

Answer 1

a cipher is a method (algorithm) used for encryption of some text. But english speakers have that habit of making verbs from nouns... hence ciphering became a synonym of encrypting.

Now, the fun part. If you consider decrypt and decipher, now they have different meanings.

• decrypt means applying the decryption key to some code
• decipher means finding the meaning of some text that was not deliberately encrypted.

In France (I'm french) we also have funny confusion with similar words. We have "chiffrer" (very similar to "cipher") that is the correct word and means encrypt, but we also use the verb "crypter" that means the same thing but is considered as an anglicism (verb built from english "crypted"). When we go for the opposite words "décrypter" and "dechiffrer" we also have different meanings but not like the english ones... "déchiffrer" means the same that both english words decrypt and decipher depending on the case, but "décrypter" is used when you try to get the clear text without the code (it means breaking the code). I believe there is no english word that means that.

Looking at my answer, I wonder if things were not clearer before it.... natural language is definitely some kind of encryption.

Answer 2

You might take a look at this article on the difference between Encryption and Cryptography. It also addresses the definition of cipher in the process.

Excerpts:

What is Cryptography?

In simple terms, cryptography is the science concerned with the study of secret communication.

What is Encryption?

...

... "encryption" basically is some process or algorithm (known as a cipher) to make information hidden or secret. And to make that process useful, you need some code (or key) to make information accessible.