Analysis of individual security aspects of a cipher or algorithm, not the security of a cipher or algorithm in general (which would lean towards “algorithm-design”).
Cryptanalysis is the analysis of cryptographic algorithms with the aim of finding weaknesses, which allow attackers to "break" them. For ciphers, the aim is to get the key or plaintext, for hashes it is to find collisions or preimages, for signatures/MACs it is to create forgeries. Methods include differential, linear and algebraic cryptanalysis.
Use this tag for Q&As related to the analysis of individual security aspects of a cipher or algorithm, not the security of a cipher or algorithm in general (which would lean towards algorithm-design).
