Chosen Ciphertext Attack
A “Chosen Ciphertext Attack” is a type of computer security problem that happens when an attacker can pick an encrypted message they want to decrypt, and then they can also choose a special piece of code to send to the computer that has the message. The computer will use that special code to do some fancy math on the encrypted message, and then it will send the result back to the attacker. If the attacker does this enough times, they can figure out the secret key that the computer is using to encrypt the messages. Once they have the secret key, they can read any encrypted messages that they want. This is bad! The good news is that people who design computer security systems know about this problem, and they build ways to prevent it from happening. But sometimes, people come up with new ways to try to trick the computer into giving up the secret key anyway. It’s a constant battle between the people trying to keep things secure, and the people trying to break into them.