Obfuscation

Obfuscation is the concealment of meaning in communication, making communication confusing, intentionally ambiguous, and more difficult to interpret.

Contents 1 Background 2 Cryptography 3 See also 4 References 5 External links

Background

Obfuscation may be used for many purposes. Doctors have been accused of using jargon to conceal unpleasant facts from a patient. American author Michael Crichton claimed that medical writing is a "highly skilled, calculated attempt to confuse the reader".^[1] B. F. Skinner, noted psychologist, commented on medical notation as a form of multiple audience control, which allows the doctor to communicate to the pharmacist things which might be opposed by the patient if they could understand it.^[2] Similarly text-based language, like gyaru-moji and some forms of leet are obfuscated to make them incomprehensible to outsiders.

Cryptography

In cryptography, obfuscation refers to encoding the input data before it is sent to a hash function or other encryption scheme. This technique helps to make brute force attacks unfeasible, as it is difficult to determine the correct cleartext.

In network security, obfuscation refers to methods used to obscure an attack payload from inspection by network protection systems.

See also

• Eschew obfuscation
• Plain English
• Politics and the English Language
• Propaganda
• Psychology
• Sociology

References

External links

Look up obfuscation in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

v • d • e Fallacies of relevance General Absurdity • Accident • Ad nauseam • Argument from ignorance • Argument from silence • Argumentum ad populum • Base rate fallacy • Compound question • Fallacy of many questions • Argument to moderation • Naturalistic fallacy • Proof by assertion • Irrelevant conclusion • Special pleading • Straw man • Style over substance fallacy • Two wrongs make a right Appeals to emotion Fear • Flattery • Nature • Novelty • Pity • Ridicule • Repugnance • Spite Genetic fallacies Ad hominem (Ad hominem tu quoque) • Appeal to authority • Appeal to motive • Appeal to tradition • Appeal to wealth • Appeal to poverty • Association fallacy • Bulverism • Chronological snobbery • Ipse-dixitism • Poisoning the well • Appeal to etymology • Reductio ad Hitlerum Appeals to consequences Appeal to force • Wishful thinking

v • d • e Informal fallacies Begging the question · Fallacy of distribution (Composition · Division) · Gambler's fallacy and its inverse · Many questions · Red herring fallacy · Special pleading Correlative-based fallacies False dilemma (Perfect solution) · Denying the correlative · Suppressed correlative Deductive fallacies Accident · Converse accident Inductive fallacies Biased sample · Conjunction fallacy · False analogy · Hasty generalization · Misleading vividness · Overwhelming exception Vagueness and ambiguity Continuum fallacy · False precision · Slippery slope Equivocation Equivocation · False attribution · Fallacy of quoting out of context · Loki's Wager · No true Scotsman · Reification Questionable cause Circular cause and consequence · Correlation does not imply causation (Cum hoc) · Post hoc · Regression fallacy · Single cause · Texas sharpshooter · Wrong direction Other types of fallacy

Privacy: I log your IP address, the request you submitted, and when you dunnit. I also spy on you through cameras in your neighbour's eyes. What, you think he's a person? No, he's my own private Terminator.