But does anyone realize how much it hurt?

[afortiori]

Has anyone ever thought about the gender implications of Alice, Bob and Eve? I mean, why is Eve a girl? Clearly in part it's because of the convenient name (and how loaded is the name Eve? come on, crypto guys.)  But really - especially when these three appeared on the scene, there were not very many girls running about in cryptoland. I mean, sure

Comments

[ramiki]

title refers to xkcd!

I always thought she was called Eve because she was an eavesdropper. I don't know if that's what you mean by "convenient."

I think a case could be made that Alice and Bob are equally victimized by Eve, and that Alice has a more active role than Bob, because she is sending the message.

Also, look there is a whole wikipedia article about Alice and Bob!

[jadedmerlin46]

Wow, I am so confused. I probably missed almost every reference in this post. Explain sometime? *halo*

[afortiori]

Um, alice bob and eve are the names used when talking about computer security. so in a textbook or paper, if you're trying to explain how some kind of hacking works, it will go something like, "alice is trying to send bob a secure communication. eve has set up a such and such on the such and such, which can listen to everything alice sends over the connection."

hope that helps!