Comment by schoen
4 months ago
"The adversary" is standard terminology in analyzing cryptographic security.
It would be interesting to figure out who introduced it. I looked briefly on Google Scholar, and I see it's used in the modern sense as early as Yao (1982), but it might have been used much earlier. It doesn't appear in the Diffie-Hellman (1976) or RSA (1977) papers.
"Adversary" is simply a standard English word. It is neither religious or jargon. My assumption is that the reason it is often used in cryptography papers is because "attacker" rings a bit harshly when you repeat it over and over again.
Attacker rings harsh, and very limp. "The Adversary" is a common occult, religious and Biblical term for the Devil, Satan. The Hebrew word Satan means "the adversary". That's why it's funny and appropriate, lol!
brief bibliography - https://web.archive.org/web/20250316045952/https://pastebin....
Well either way it's an appropriate name, lol!