Shannon measured the secrecy of a cipher in terms of the key equivocation
Hc(K) for a given ciphertext C: 1 Hc(K) = ∑p(C)∑Pc(K)log2-------- c k Pc(K) Where Pc(K) is the probability of K given C. If Hc(K) = 0 then there is no uncertainty and the
cipher is theoretically breakable given enough resources. As the length of the cipher text increases, the equivocation usually decreases.
The Unicity distance is the smallest N such that Hc(K) is close to 0, that is, it is the amount of ciphertext needed to uniquely determine the key.