A correlation attack is a type of statistical attack that is commonly used in cryptanalysis to exploit weaknesses in cryptographic algorithms, particularly those that involve block ciphers or stream ciphers. The fundamental idea behind a correlation attack is to take advantage of the statistical relationships between certain input and output variables. In simpler terms, the attacker looks for patterns in the encrypted data and attempts to correlate these patterns with the plaintext (the original unencrypted data) to recover secret keys or uncover sensitive information.
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