byte

Eight bits, and the unit almost all storage is counted in. One byte holds a single character of plain English text, a number from 0 to 255, or one component of a colour.

Watch out: Watch the capital letter. A capital B is a byte and a lower-case b is a bit, so 100 Mb/s and 100 MB/s differ by a factor of eight. That convention is widely observed and not universally, so a figure worth acting on is worth confirming.

The byte was not always eight bits — early machines used six, seven and nine — and it settled on eight with the IBM System/360 in 1964, which is also where the word became standard. The French and several other languages use "octet" instead, which has the advantage of saying eight in its own name.

One byte in every information unit

• Password Entropy (Uniform Random Generation)
• Passphrase Entropy (Diceware and Word Lists)
• Average Brute-Force Time
• Hash Collision Resistance (Birthday Bound)
• Truncated Hash Strength
• Elliptic Curve Security Strength

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