Cryptography-Digest Digest #30, Volume #9 Wed, 3 Feb 99 18:13:03 EST
Contents:
Re: hardRandNumbGen (R. Knauer)
Re: *** Where Does The Randomness Come From ?!? *** ("PAC")
Re: The Folger Manuscript (John Savard)
Re: Who will win in AES contest ?? (DJohn37050)
Re: *** Where Does The Randomness Come From ?!? *** ("PAC")
More about Russian Cryptography (John Savard)
International connections using strong encryption key ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
Re: 65536-bit block cipher ("Kazak, Boris")
Re: *** Where Does The Randomness Come From ?!? *** (R. Knauer)
Re: Who will win in AES contest ?? (Fabrice Noilhan)
Re: Encoding for telephone over Internet (John Curtis)
Re: Loony question (AbsolutAF3)
Re: *** Where Does The Randomness Come From ?!? *** ("PAC")
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (R. Knauer)
Subject: Re: hardRandNumbGen
Date: Wed, 03 Feb 1999 18:44:56 GMT
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
On 1 Feb 1999 09:18:14 -0500, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Patrick Juola)
wrote:
>>I believe that a radioactive decay TRNG can be verified to within a
>>known level of precision.
>But this is yet another example of a statistical test. There will be
>some level of precision greater than which you can't test -- and
>some possiblity that the randomness will result in an apparent
>aberration.
I covered this point in an earlier post. The tests, statistical or
otherwise, would be of a diagnostic nature applied to the sybsystems
of the TRNG. Those diagnostics would be based on the design of the
applicable subsystem in terms of known modes of malfunction. Therefore
those diagnostic tests are of a determinant nature since their results
can be related to a known condition.
That cannot be said of statistical tests of the final output sequence,
which by definition is completely indeterminant. Of course, something
in one of the subsystems of the TRNG must be random, and testing it
statistically would not be valid. But the fact that it is random can
be inferred from the nature of the underlying physical process, like
with radioactive decay.
Therefore a complete audit of the TRNG, subsystem by subsystem, can be
conducted resulting in a known level of precision for the final
output. Such a TRNG can be certified as proveably secure if the level
of precision is such that it would take an impossibly large work
effort to decrypt OTP ciphers.
The problem with statistical tests on the final output is that there
is no reliable way to quantify the level of precision for ALL outputs,
and there is no reliable way to filter out "bad" outputs since there
is no such thing as a "bad" output - except possibly in the case of
the diagnostic test for all 1s (open output) or all 0s (shorted
output).
Bob Knauer
"Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government
of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others?"
--Thomas Jefferson
------------------------------
From: "PAC" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: sci.skeptic,sci.philosophy.meta
Subject: Re: *** Where Does The Randomness Come From ?!? ***
Date: Wed, 3 Feb 1999 12:35:19 -0800
R. Knauer wrote in message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>...
>On 02 Feb 1999 17:13:44 -0800, Marty Fouts
><[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>> > Why should randomness have to come from somewhere? Why not state
>> > that randomness is a lack of order, and ask where order comes from
>> > instead?
>
>>because, perhaps, 'order' is a poorly understood concept?
>
>Indeed! Reading Li and Vitanyi's book on Kolmogorov Complexity will
>convince you of that in a hurry. Despite the confusion, they claim
>that order and randomness are intimately connected to a measure called
>Kolmogorov Complexity, and is essentially independent of the computer
>used to implement it. IOW, K-complexity is essentially a property of
>the number under consideration itself.
>
>The number X = 111...1 (length N) possesses order because the
>algorithmic complexity is much smaller than N, whereas the first N
>bits from the toss of a fair coin is in general not algorithmically
>reducibile, since the smallest algorithm that will reproduce it is of
>length N bits.
>
>For the N-bit string 111...1, the program for reproducing X is:
>
>for(int i=0;i<N;i++) printf("1");
>
>which is short compared to the length N of the string it reproduces.
>
>Notice that in order to encode the number N in the for( ) loop above,
>it only takes log2(N) bits, which is small compared to the length of
>the number X itself. If the number X is 1048 bits in length, N can be
>encoded in just 10 bits, since log2(1048) = 10 (decimal).
>
>This means that there is significant order present in that string, as
>we expect there to be. Thus that order has been quantified by the
>length of the algorithm.
>
>By contrast for the random number X, the shortest program is:
>
>printf ( "x1.x2.x3...xN");
>
>Here x1.x2.x3...xN represents the concatenation of bits x1, x2, x3 ...
>xN, resulting in a program of length approximately N - since the
>entire number X must be included in the program in order to be able to
>preproduce it. IOW, there is no algorithmic reduction possible because
>the number is random.
>
>Greg Chaitin has several accessible papers for the informed layman on
>these topics at:
>
>http://www.umcs.maine.edu/~chaitin/
>http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/CDMTCS/chaitin/
>
>Bob Knauer
>
>"Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government
>of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others?"
>--Thomas Jefferson
>
I would also think that order/disorder is based more on a viewer
perspective, i.e. elements having similar vector magnitudes/direction see
each other in order, while those not with the same see each other as
disordered.
Though viewer perspective is part of the problem with randomness,
specially dealing with more radical theories I guess, still more implicit
that randomness\determinism is more of a causal question than that of
perspective: something random/determined would have the same status
regardless of viewer perspective, something ordered/disorder not so.
Phil C.
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (John Savard)
Subject: Re: The Folger Manuscript
Date: Wed, 03 Feb 1999 17:32:03 GMT
Jim Gillogly <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote, in part:
>J.W. wrote:
>> Does anybody know how the Folger Manuscript is decoded. I have a bonus
>> Crypto project that has page 21. If there is anyone who can give me
>> clues as to how to break it I would greatly appreciate it.
>"The Folger Manuscript" is ambiguous -- The Folger has a great many
>manuscripts, including one that the Oxfordians think supports their
>case against Shakespeare. There's also an American Masonic document
>in cipher, I think by somebody named Folger (no relation to the museum),
>that was the subject of the eponymous book by S. Brent Morris. I haven't
>seen that document or Morris's book.
>Want to scan your "page 21" and put it on a web site somewhere? Not
>that anybody here would help you with the homework! :)
Clues, perhaps, but they wouldn't do the homework _for_ him.
Helen Fouche Gaines wrote a book on breaking all kinds of
paper-and-pencil ciphers, and the Teach Yourself book on Codes and
Ciphers deals specifically with historical nomenclators. These would
be good references.
John Savard
http://www.freenet.edmonton.ab.ca/~jsavard/index.html
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (DJohn37050)
Subject: Re: Who will win in AES contest ??
Date: 3 Feb 1999 21:18:40 GMT
I can understand holding the publication of the papers on the web until after
the 2nd AES conference, but think they should be available after that.
I was agreeing with the previous statement that having more than one algorithm
sanctioned by NIST was not necessarily fatal.
Don Johnson
------------------------------
From: "PAC" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: sci.skeptic,sci.philosophy.meta
Subject: Re: *** Where Does The Randomness Come From ?!? ***
Date: Wed, 3 Feb 1999 13:18:44 -0800
REsending - problems with server
R. Knauer wrote in message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>...
>On 02 Feb 1999 17:13:44 -0800, Marty Fouts
><[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>> > Why should randomness have to come from somewhere? Why not state
>> > that randomness is a lack of order, and ask where order comes from
>> > instead?
>
>>because, perhaps, 'order' is a poorly understood concept?
>
>Indeed! Reading Li and Vitanyi's book on Kolmogorov Complexity will
>convince you of that in a hurry. Despite the confusion, they claim
>that order and randomness are intimately connected to a measure called
>Kolmogorov Complexity, and is essentially independent of the computer
>used to implement it. IOW, K-complexity is essentially a property of
>the number under consideration itself.
>
>The number X = 111...1 (length N) possesses order because the
>algorithmic complexity is much smaller than N, whereas the first N
>bits from the toss of a fair coin is in general not algorithmically
>reducibile, since the smallest algorithm that will reproduce it is of
>length N bits.
>
>For the N-bit string 111...1, the program for reproducing X is:
>
>for(int i=0;i<N;i++) printf("1");
>
>which is short compared to the length N of the string it reproduces.
>
>Notice that in order to encode the number N in the for( ) loop above,
>it only takes log2(N) bits, which is small compared to the length of
>the number X itself. If the number X is 1048 bits in length, N can be
>encoded in just 10 bits, since log2(1048) = 10 (decimal).
>
>This means that there is significant order present in that string, as
>we expect there to be. Thus that order has been quantified by the
>length of the algorithm.
>
>By contrast for the random number X, the shortest program is:
>
>printf ( "x1.x2.x3...xN");
>
>Here x1.x2.x3...xN represents the concatenation of bits x1, x2, x3 ...
>xN, resulting in a program of length approximately N - since the
>entire number X must be included in the program in order to be able to
>preproduce it. IOW, there is no algorithmic reduction possible because
>the number is random.
>
>Greg Chaitin has several accessible papers for the informed layman on
>these topics at:
>
>http://www.umcs.maine.edu/~chaitin/
>http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/CDMTCS/chaitin/
>
>Bob Knauer
>
>"Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government
>of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others?"
>--Thomas Jefferson
>
I would also think that order/disorder is based more on a viewer
perspective, i.e. elements having similar vector magnitudes/direction see
each other in order, while those not with the same see each other as
disordered.
Though viewer perspective is part of the problem with randomness,
specially dealing with more radical theories I guess, still more implicit
that randomness\determinism is more of a causal question than that of
perspective: something random/determined would have the same status
regardless of viewer perspective, something ordered/disorder not so.
Phil C.
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (John Savard)
Subject: More about Russian Cryptography
Date: Wed, 03 Feb 1999 20:48:55 GMT
"andrey vishnyak" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote, in part:
>For more information look our site www.ancort.ru
There is some interesting material on this site, for example on:
http://www.ancort.ru/English/newspaper_003.asp
identifying the cipher machine M-100 (a designation similar to those
appearing on Joerg Drobick's web site) as "Emerald", and the first of
a series which apparently used some sort of novel stream cipher
principle which allowed longer periods between the entry of new keys.
John Savard
http://www.freenet.edmonton.ab.ca/~jsavard/index.html
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: International connections using strong encryption key
Date: Wed, 03 Feb 1999 21:16:28 GMT
I am not asking a question about export of encryption software. Assume that
someone who is not in the US is connecting to a site in the US using 128-bit
encryption (say, SSL using a domestic version of a browser). Are there any
legal issues related to this? Or, to ask the question a different way ... if
my US-based host requires 128-bit encryption to connect, am I breaking the law
by accepting connections from moutside the US?
I apologize if this is a common question, and will be thrilled to be referred
to a published resource which answers the question.
Robin Thompson
============= Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ============
http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own
------------------------------
From: "Kazak, Boris" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: 65536-bit block cipher
Date: Wed, 03 Feb 1999 16:40:57 -0500
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Trevor Jackson, III wrote:
>
> Multiplication is considered a necessary prerequisite to cipher design.
> Since the correct product of 256 bytes and 8 bits per byte is 4096,
==========================
Is your calculator broken? I cannot believe that you could reach this
result with paper-and-pencil multiplication... Sorry (2048).
And how does it really happen? In 2 posts in such a seemingly
serious group, 2 examples of blatant illiteracy? (65536 vs 4096)?
BNK
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (R. Knauer)
Crossposted-To: sci.skeptic,sci.philosophy.meta
Subject: Re: *** Where Does The Randomness Come From ?!? ***
Date: Wed, 03 Feb 1999 21:53:56 GMT
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
On Wed, 3 Feb 1999 12:35:19 -0800, "PAC" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I would also think that order/disorder is based more on a viewer
>perspective, i.e. elements having similar vector magnitudes/direction see
>each other in order, while those not with the same see each other as
>disordered.
Indeed!
If you do not know geography, then the string "constantinople" won't
mean anything to you and therefore you will view it as a random
string. Yet to someone who knows geography, it is a very simple word
to understand.
Even if you do know what "constantinople" means, its binary
representation would appear random - unless you knew how to "view"
binary representations of English words.
> Though viewer perspective is part of the problem with randomness,
>specially dealing with more radical theories I guess, still more implicit
>that randomness\determinism is more of a causal question than that of
>perspective: something random/determined would have the same status
>regardless of viewer perspective, something ordered/disorder not so.
The whole point of Kolmogorov-Chaitin Algorithmic Complexity theory is
that the order/randomness of a string is independent of the "viewer"
(computer) to within an additive constant of order unity, which
accounts for the size of the interpreter running on the computer
and how universal the computer is. IOW, a universal computer does not
suffer with problems of interpretation. As I understand it, Li and
Vitanyi claim that Kolmogorov Complexity is the only known theory that
has that property.
That's because algorithms deal with primitive logic and arithmetic
operations that are of a most fundamental nature - so fundamental that
they are actually part of reality itself. The very fact that the
wavefunction in Quantum Mechanics represents a probability tells you
that reality is intimately bound up with logic and arithmetic
operations.
If you are so inclined, I highly recommend that book by Li and
Vitanyi. The introduction and first chapter alone are worth a trip to
the library.
Bob Knauer
"Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government
of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others?"
--Thomas Jefferson
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Fabrice Noilhan)
Subject: Re: Who will win in AES contest ??
Date: 3 Feb 1999 22:12:29 GMT
According to Hironobu Suzuki <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
> For example, Linux is running not only under Intel CPU but also
> running under PPC, SPARC, Alpha, MIPS etc. If ONLY one ANSI C cipher
> code is given, it will be running all cpu.
Have you checked the submissions to the AES? Many ciphers were not
implemented in plain ANSI-C as the code didn't compile or gave a wrong
value on 64 bit processors or little/big endian machines.
ANSI C does not mean that your code will be portable. Moreover, in
a crucial part of the system (such as IP) code is written in asm
as you can check in the sources. It does not make sense for me to write
code that may slow the filesystem... Writing portable ANSI C code implies
a penalty too!
> BTW. I have a question about serpent asm code which you tested. Is
> this serpent code optimized using the right way of bit slice
> technique?
Don't know about that. This data was extracted from the submission of
Serpent I think; there are similar datas in a report from Counterpane.
Anyway, since Serpent has been built with bit slice conception, asm is
not really much faster than C (my guess).
Fabrice
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (John Curtis)
Subject: Re: Encoding for telephone over Internet
Date: 3 Feb 1999 22:27:42 GMT
In article <794d12$qgf$[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Patrick Juola)
writes:
>In article <7900fr$6rb$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>why do you you think that a real time communication doesnt need
>>as much security ?
>
>Because, as I stated below, most real-time communications don't need
>to stay secret as long. The interesting lifespan of the sort of data
>communicated by telephone is typically measured in hours or day. There's
>a reason that people don't "sign" contracts over the phone.
>
> -kitten
Tell that to John Gotti.
jcurtis
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (AbsolutAF3)
Subject: Re: Loony question
Date: 3 Feb 1999 22:53:18 GMT
>Would a particularly awful track off a CD with a lot of
>screeching guitars and howling monkeys be a decent source
>of random numbers?
It really depends on your use of the numbers. Ideally you want your random
numbers not to be easily reproducable.. perhaps it would work better if instead
of playing the track straight through, to take samples at different points in
the song and use those to produce your "random" numbers.
Brandon
------------------------------
From: "PAC" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: sci.skeptic,sci.philosophy.meta
Subject: Re: *** Where Does The Randomness Come From ?!? ***
Date: Wed, 3 Feb 1999 15:00:19 -0800
REsending - problems with server
R. Knauer wrote in message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>...
>On 02 Feb 1999 17:13:44 -0800, Marty Fouts
><[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>> > Why should randomness have to come from somewhere? Why not state
>> > that randomness is a lack of order, and ask where order comes from
>> > instead?
>
>>because, perhaps, 'order' is a poorly understood concept?
>
>Indeed! Reading Li and Vitanyi's book on Kolmogorov Complexity will
>convince you of that in a hurry. Despite the confusion, they claim
>that order and randomness are intimately connected to a measure called
>Kolmogorov Complexity, and is essentially independent of the computer
>used to implement it. IOW, K-complexity is essentially a property of
>the number under consideration itself.
>
>The number X = 111...1 (length N) possesses order because the
>algorithmic complexity is much smaller than N, whereas the first N
>bits from the toss of a fair coin is in general not algorithmically
>reducibile, since the smallest algorithm that will reproduce it is of
>length N bits.
>
>For the N-bit string 111...1, the program for reproducing X is:
>
>for(int i=0;i<N;i++) printf("1");
>
>which is short compared to the length N of the string it reproduces.
>
>Notice that in order to encode the number N in the for( ) loop above,
>it only takes log2(N) bits, which is small compared to the length of
>the number X itself. If the number X is 1048 bits in length, N can be
>encoded in just 10 bits, since log2(1048) = 10 (decimal).
>
>This means that there is significant order present in that string, as
>we expect there to be. Thus that order has been quantified by the
>length of the algorithm.
>
>By contrast for the random number X, the shortest program is:
>
>printf ( "x1.x2.x3...xN");
>
>Here x1.x2.x3...xN represents the concatenation of bits x1, x2, x3 ...
>xN, resulting in a program of length approximately N - since the
>entire number X must be included in the program in order to be able to
>preproduce it. IOW, there is no algorithmic reduction possible because
>the number is random.
>
>Greg Chaitin has several accessible papers for the informed layman on
>these topics at:
>
>http://www.umcs.maine.edu/~chaitin/
>http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/CDMTCS/chaitin/
>
>Bob Knauer
>
>"Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government
>of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others?"
>--Thomas Jefferson
>
I would also think that order/disorder is based more on a viewer
perspective, i.e. elements having similar vector magnitudes/direction see
each other in order, while those not with the same see each other as
disordered.
Though viewer perspective is part of the problem with randomness,
specially dealing with more radical theories I guess, still more implicit
that randomness\determinism is more of a causal question than that of
perspective: something random/determined would have the same status
regardless of viewer perspective, something ordered/disorder not so.
Phil C.
------------------------------
** FOR YOUR REFERENCE **
The service address, to which questions about the list itself and requests
to be added to or deleted from it should be directed, is:
Internet: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
You can send mail to the entire list (and sci.crypt) via:
Internet: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
End of Cryptography-Digest Digest
******************************
