Alice and Bob

Alice and Bob are fictional characters commonly used as placeholders in discussions about cryptographic systems and protocols,[1] and in other science and engineering literature where there are several participants in a thought experiment.

The Alice and Bob characters were created by Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir, and Leonard Adleman in their 1978 paper "A Method for Obtaining Digital Signatures and Public-key Cryptosystems".

[2] Subsequently, they have become common archetypes in many scientific and engineering fields, such as quantum cryptography, game theory and physics.

"[2] is believed to be easier to describe and understand than if the hypothetical people were simply named A and B as in "How can B send a private message M to A in a public-key cryptosystem?"

The first mention of Alice and Bob in the context of cryptography was in Rivest, Shamir, and Adleman's 1978 article "A method for obtaining digital signatures and public-key cryptosystems.

In fact, in the two previous articles by Rivest, Shamir, and Adleman, introducing the RSA cryptosystem, there is no mention of Alice and Bob.

Eve was invented in 1988 by Charles Bennet, Gilles Brassard, and Jean-Marc Robert, in their paper, "Privacy Amplification by Public Discussion.