Talk:Security parameter

I'd suggest that the following points should appear under this topic:

Security parameter $k$ is a "knob" we can use to tune the security level of our cryptographic schemes. Higher the value of $k$ , the smaller the adversary's "advantage."
Larger $k$ would usually mean the scheme's complexity (ie, amount of computation/communication required by the honest parties) is higher.
We shall typically require that the complexity of the scheme grows only poolynomially in $k$ , but the adversary's advantage goes down as a negligible function of $k$ .

The following point could go into the page defining negligible functions.

We consider all adversaries whose running time is polynomial in $k$ , and an adversary with a polynomial factor more running time gets at least a polynomial factor more advantage (if advantage is small); but we would like this advantage also to remain "negligible." The way a negligible function is defined, a polynomial function times a negligible function remains negligible.

--Manojmp-- - done nikhil