Obfuscation

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For the term as used in computer science, see Obfuscated code.

Obfuscation refers to the concept of concealing the meaning of communication by making it more confusing and harder to interpret.

Obfuscation may be used for other purposes. Doctors have been accused of using jargon to conceal unpleasant facts from a patient. Author and doctor Michael Crichton has claimed that medical writing is a "highly skilled, calculated attempt to confuse the reader". [1]. Similarly text-based language, like gyaru-moji and some forms of leet are obfuscated to make them incomprehensible to outsiders.

In cryptography, obfuscation refers to the practice of encoding the input data before it is sent to a hash function or other encryption scheme. This technique helps to make brute force attacks infeasible, as it is difficult to ascertain when one has found the correct cleartext.