How deeply does API Design Patterns cover ciphertext?

Explains representation trade-offs and transport encoding, but does not detail encryption algorithms or decryption internals.

Ciphertext

As explained in API Design Patterns

An encrypted value is data transformed by encryption so that its original content cannot be read without the required key or decryption process.

Ciphertext is encrypted data whose contents should remain unreadable to consumers without the required decryption process. In API pagination, keeping ciphertext opaque protects implementation flexibility: consumers cannot depend on internal token details that may later change. section 21.3.2

Represent encrypted values according to how they travel through an API:

Avoid numeric types: an integer cannot represent the encrypted data being stored. section 21.3.2
Prefer a string for transport convenience, especially when values appear in URLs or JSON. section 21.3.2
Use a Base64-encoded encrypted value serialized as UTF-8 when raw bytes are inconvenient. section 21.3.2

Opaque pagination token

A pagination API can return a string page token containing a Base64-encoded encrypted value. The consumer passes it back unchanged in a later request instead of inspecting or depending on its contents. section 21.3.2

How API Design Patterns covers it

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Also explained in

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Secure APIsCiphertext is data produced by encrypting plaintext so that it is not readable without the required decryption capability.
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Software Security for DevelopersCiphertext is data produced by encryption that is intended to be unintelligible without the required cryptographic key.
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Real-World CryptographyCiphertext is encrypted data produced from plaintext and intended to be decrypted by an authorized recipient.
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WordPress Power Toolkit: Harness AI to build next-level websitesAn encrypted message is a message transformed into an encoded representation intended to prevent direct reading without decoding.

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Related concepts

encryptionproduced by · Encryption is the cryptographic transformation of readable data into ciphertext to conceal its contents, reversible through decryption with appropriate information.
Kyberproduced by · Kyber is a lattice-based public-key cryptographic scheme based on the learning with errors problem that supports key encapsulation and key exchange.
initialization vectorconfigures · An initialization vector is a typically nonsecret value supplied to a cryptographic operation to initialize or vary its processing across uses.
whole-value substitution attackused by · A whole-value substitution attack is an attack in which an attacker replaces one encrypted record value with a ciphertext copied from another record to cause unauthorized plaintext substitution.
keyboard shift erroraddressed by · A keyboard shift error is a text corruption pattern caused by entering characters adjacent to the intended keys on a keyboard layout.

This explainer was generated by Manning's knowledge graph from the text of API Design Patterns. The section links point to the parts of the book it draws on.