rubberhose

Rubber hose (or rubberhose) typically refers to a flexible tube made of rubber used to convey liquids or gases. It is usually constructed from natural or synthetic rubber and comes in a range of diameters and lengths. Common applications include garden hoses, automotive cooling systems, laboratory equipment, and industrial piping. In everyday language the term evokes its utilitarian, non-pressurized uses, though it can also denote more specialized hoses such as heat-resistant or high-pressure varieties.

The phrase rubber hose can also appear in historical accounts of coercive interrogation methods, where it is used as a metaphor for torture involving a rubber hose. Because of its sensational associations, the term is mainly encountered in discussions of police history, human rights, and political memoirs rather than technical documentation.

In cryptography, the term rubber-hose cryptanalysis describes the hypothetical scenario of obtaining cryptographic secrets from a person under physical duress. The label is used tongue-in-cheek by researchers and security professionals to emphasize the practical threat of coercion, rather than to describe a real mathematical technique. It underscores concerns about secure key management, passphrase protection, and the limitations of legal safeguards when memory could be compelled. See also: hoses; cryptography; security and coercion.