Gardening: Planting Phrases For Codebreaking

In cryptography, “gardening” means deliberately prompting an enemy to send messages that contain a specific, known piece of text so codebreakers can use that string to help decrypt the rest. Intelligence agencies might do this by shaping events or communications so the target feels compelled to respond in a predictable way that includes the chosen phrase or format. Once the enemy transmits that known text, cryptanalysts use it as a foothold to break the cipher more easily.

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