Title is self explaining.
+1
A:
I have never read any piece where the difference between the two made a difference.
encipher |enˈsīfər| verb [ trans. ] convert (a message or piece of text) into a coded form; encrypt.
Pascal Cuoq
2010-01-27 11:32:08
+1
A:
Well, the semantic difference is that they are different words. One has the ending of ...
I'm going to assume you didn't mean "semantic" but "technical" difference. So the technical difference is, there isn't one. They are the same thing. Only, almost no-one uses the word "encipher". So stick to "encrypt".
Noon Silk
2010-01-27 11:32:31
Different word = syntactic difference. Different meaning = semantic difference. Semantic is the right word in the question.
ewernli
2010-01-27 11:38:13
@ewernli: Well sure, if you want to get all semantic about it :P
Noon Silk
2010-01-27 11:39:49
Actually, encipher was the original correct term; *"encrypt"* has only more recently become popular in the lexicon.
BlueRaja - Danny Pflughoeft
2010-01-27 15:13:03
+2
A:
In French, there are two words, "chiffrer" and "crypter"; theoretically, the latter would mean "to encrypt but without knowledge of the key, i.e. as part of an attack" (it is more often encountered as "décrypter" which means "to decrypt without prior knowledge of the key"). Relatively few French-speaking programmers are even aware of that distinction, and the French translations of many applications (including Outlook Express) use "crypter" in places where they should use "chiffrer".
In English, I do not think that this distinction actually exists. "Encipher" and "chiffrer" both come from the Arabic "sifr" which means "zero", while "encrypt" and "crypter" come from the Greek "kryptos" (hidden, secret). The use of "sifr" can apparently be traced back to Giovan Battista Bellaso, who published in 1553 cryptographic methods in Latin (as was normal at that time) but with Italian titles such as "La Cifra" and "Novi et singolari modi di cifrare". His point was that his cryptographic techniques involved some computations with numbers, and in 16th century Italy, mathematics were still an import from old Greek by way of Arab writers, brought to the christian Europe during the Crusades. Hence the use of the Arabic root.
In that sense, one could say that "to encipher" means "to encrypt, with some mathematics involved in the process". By definition, this covers any encryption in which a computer was used, so the terms "encipher" and "encrypt" are practically synonymous.
Thomas Pornin
2010-01-27 13:52:55