Chaos is introduced to cryptology. As an example of the applications, a secret key cryptosystem by iterating a one dimensional chaotic map is proposed. This system is based on the characteristics of chaos, which are sensitivity of parameters, sensitivity of initial points, and randomness of sequences obtained by iterating a chaotic map. A ciphertext is obtained by the iteration of a inverse chaotic map from an initial point, which denotes a plaintext. If the times of the iteration is large enough, the randohinets of the encryption and the decryption function is so large that attackers cannot break this cryptosystem by statistic characteristics. In addition t o the security of the statistical point, even if the cryptosystern is composed by a tent map, which is one of the simplest chaotic maps, setting a finite computation size avoids a ciphertext only attack. The most attractive point of the cryptosystem is that the cryptosystem is composed by only iterating a simple calculations though the information rate of the cryptosystem is about 0.5.