3 results about "Alice and Bob" patented technology

Alice and Bob are fictional characters commonly used as placeholder names in cryptology, as well as science and engineering literature. The Alice and Bob characters were invented by Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir, and Leonard Adleman in their 1978 paper "A method for obtaining digital signatures and public-key cryptosystems." Subsequently, they have become common archetypes in many scientific and engineering fields, such as quantum cryptography, game theory and physics. As the use of Alice and Bob became more widespread, additional characters were added, each with a particular meaning. These characters do not have to refer to humans; they refer to generic agents which might be different computers or even different programs running on a single computer.