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Key commitment

Security På svenska → Updated: 2026-10-13

The property that a ciphertext can only be opened by one key, which many modern AEAD ciphers do not guarantee.

Authenticated encryption guarantees that a message has not been modified. It does not guarantee that the key is bound to the ciphertext. AES-GCM and ChaCha20-Poly1305 can, in constructed cases, let one ciphertext verify under two different keys.

This is not just a footnote. In password-based encryption or systems with several recipients, an attacker can build a file that opens under more than one password, and nothing tells the user until they trust the contents. Research on the problem picked up through the 2020s.

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