Cryptography-Digest Digest #11, Volume #11       Sat, 29 Jan 00 23:13:01 EST

Contents:
  Cryptography FAQ (10/10: References) ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
  Re: NEC claims New Strongest Crypto Algor (SCOTT19U.ZIP_GUY)
  Re: ascii to binary ("Chris Engstrom")
  Re: Help needed on peculiar use of cryptography (Nicol So)

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Crossposted-To: talk.politics.crypto,sci.answers,news.answers,talk.answers
Subject: Cryptography FAQ (10/10: References)
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: 30 Jan 2000 03:25:22 GMT

Archive-name: cryptography-faq/part10
Last-modified: 94/06/13


This is the tenth of ten parts of the sci.crypt FAQ. The parts are
mostly independent, but you should read the first part before the rest.
We don't have the time to send out missing parts by mail, so don't ask.
Notes such as ``[KAH67]'' refer to the reference list in this part.

The sections of this FAQ are available via anonymous FTP to rtfm.mit.edu 
as /pub/usenet/news.answers/cryptography-faq/part[xx]. The Cryptography 
FAQ is posted to the newsgroups sci.crypt, talk.politics.crypto, 
sci.answers, and news.answers every 21 days.



Contents

10.1. Books on history and classical methods
10.2. Books on modern methods
10.3. Survey articles
10.4. Reference articles
10.5. Journals, conference proceedings
10.6. Other
10.7. How may one obtain copies of FIPS and ANSI standards cited herein?
10.8. Electronic sources
10.9. RFCs (available from [FTPRF])
10.10. Related newsgroups


10.1. Books on history and classical methods

  [FRIE1] Lambros D. Callimahos, William F. Friedman, Military Cryptanalytics.
          Aegean Park Press, ?.
  [DEA85] Cipher A. Deavours & Louis Kruh, Machine Cryptography and
          Modern Cryptanalysis. Artech House, 610 Washington St.,
          Dedham, MA 02026, 1985.
  [FRIE2] William F. Friedman, Solving German Codes in World War I.
          Aegean Park Press, ?.
  [GAI44] H. Gaines, Cryptanalysis, a study of ciphers and their
          solution. Dover Publications, 1944.
  [HIN00] F.H.Hinsley, et al., British Intelligence in the Second
          World War. Cambridge University Press. (vol's 1, 2, 3a, 3b
          & 4, so far). XXX Years and authors, fix XXX
  [HOD83] Andrew Hodges, Alan Turing: The Enigma. Burnett Books
          Ltd., 1983
  [KAH91] David Kahn, Seizing the Enigma. Houghton Mifflin, 1991.
  [KAH67] D. Kahn, The Codebreakers. Macmillan Publishing, 1967.
          [history] [The abridged paperback edition left out most
          technical details; the original hardcover edition is
          recommended.]
  [KOZ84] W. Kozaczuk, Enigma. University Publications of America, 1984
  [KUL76] S. Kullback, Statistical Methods in Cryptanalysis. Aegean
          Park Press, 1976.
  [SIN66] A. Sinkov, Elementary Cryptanalysis. Math. Assoc. Am. 1966.
  [WEL82] Gordon Welchman, The Hut Six Story. McGraw-Hill, 1982.
  [YARDL] Herbert O. Yardley, The American Black Chamber. Aegean Park
          Press, ?.

10.2. Books on modern methods

  [BEK82] H. Beker, F. Piper, Cipher Systems. Wiley, 1982.
  [BRA88] G. Brassard, Modern Cryptology: a tutorial.
          Spinger-Verlag, 1988.
  [DEN82] D. Denning, Cryptography and Data Security. Addison-Wesley
          Publishing Company, 1982.
  [KOB89] N. Koblitz, A course in number theory and cryptography.
          Springer-Verlag, 1987.
  [KON81] A. Konheim, Cryptography: a primer. Wiley, 1981.
  [MEY82] C. Meyer and S. Matyas, Cryptography: A new dimension in
          computer security. Wiley, 1982.
  [PAT87] Wayne Patterson, Mathematical Cryptology for Computer
          Scientists and Mathematicians. Rowman & Littlefield, 1987.
  [PFL89] C. Pfleeger, Security in Computing. Prentice-Hall, 1989.
  [PRI84] W. Price, D. Davies, Security for computer networks. Wiley, 1984. 
  [RUE86] R. Rueppel, Design and Analysis of Stream Ciphers.
          Springer-Verlag, 1986.
  [SAL90] A. Saloma, Public-key cryptography. Springer-Verlag, 1990.
  [SCH94] B. Schneier, Applied Cryptography. John Wiley & Sons, 1994.
          [errata avbl from [EMAIL PROTECTED]]
  [WEL88] D. Welsh, Codes and Cryptography. Claredon Press, 1988.

10.3. Survey articles

  [ANG83] D. Angluin, D. Lichtenstein, Provable Security in Crypto-
          systems: a survey. Yale University, Department of Computer
          Science, #288, 1983.
  [BET90] T. Beth, Algorithm engineering for public key algorithms.
          IEEE Selected Areas of Communication, 1(4), 458--466,
          1990.
  [DAV83] M. Davio, J. Goethals, Elements of cryptology. in Secure
          Digital Communications, G. Longo ed., 1--57, 1983.
  [DIF79] W. Diffie, M. Hellman, Privacy and Authentication: An
          introduction to cryptography. IEEE proceedings, 67(3),
          397--427, 1979.
  [DIF88] W. Diffie, The first ten years of public key cryptography.
          IEEE proceedings, 76(5), 560--577, 1988.
  [FEI73] H. Feistel, Cryptography and Computer Privacy. Scientific 
          American, 228(5), 15--23, 1973.
  [FEI75] H. Feistel, H, W. Notz, J. Lynn Smith. Some cryptographic
          techniques for machine-to-machine data communications,
          IEEE IEEE proceedings, 63(11), 1545--1554, 1975.
  [HEL79] M. Hellman, The mathematics of public key cryptography.
          Scientific American, 130--139, 1979.
  [LAK83] S. Lakshmivarahan, Algorithms for public key
          cryptosystems. In Advances in Computers, M. Yovtis ed.,
          22, Academic Press, 45--108, 1983.
  [LEM79] A. Lempel, Cryptology in transition, Computing Surveys,
          11(4), 285--304, 1979.
  [MAS88] J. Massey, An introduction to contemporary cryptology, IEEE
          proceedings, 76(5), 533--549, 1988.
  [SIM91] G. Simmons (ed.), Contemporary Cryptology: the Science of
          Information Integrity. IEEE press, 1991.

10.4. Reference articles

  [AND83] D. Andelman, J. Reeds, On the cryptanalysis of rotor and
          substitution-permutation networks. IEEE Trans. on Inform.
          Theory, 28(4), 578--584, 1982.
  [BEN87] John Bennett, Analysis of the Encryption Algorithm Used in
          the WordPerfect Word Processing Program. Cryptologia 11(4),
          206--210, 1987.
  [BER91] H. A. Bergen and W. J. Caelli, File Security in WordPerfect
          5.0. Cryptologia 15(1), 57--66, January 1991.
  [BIH91] E. Biham and A. Shamir, Differential cryptanalysis of
          DES-like cryptosystems. Journal of Cryptology, vol. 4, #1,
          3--72, 1991.
  [BI91a] E. Biham, A. Shamir, Differential cryptanalysis of Snefru,
          Khafre, REDOC-II, LOKI and LUCIFER. In Proceedings of CRYPTO
          '91, ed. by J. Feigenbaum, 156--171, 1992.
  [BOY89] J. Boyar, Inferring Sequences Produced by Pseudo-Random
          Number Generators. Journal of the ACM, 1989.
  [BRI86] E. Brickell, J. Moore, M. Purtill, Structure in the
          S-boxes of DES. In Proceedings of CRYPTO '86, A. M. Odlyzko
          ed., 3--8, 1987.
  [BRO89] L. Brown, A proposed design for an extended DES, Computer
          Security in the Computer Age. Elsevier Science Publishers
          B.V. (North Holland), IFIP, W. J. Caelli ed., 9--22, 1989.
  [BRO90] L. Brown, J. Pieprzyk, J. Seberry, LOKI - a cryptographic
          primitive for authentication and secrecy applications.
          In Proceedings of AUSTCRYPT 90, 229--236, 1990.
  [CAE90] H. Gustafson, E. Dawson, W. Caelli, Comparison of block
          ciphers. In Proceedings of AUSCRYPT '90, J. Seberry and J.
          Piepryzk eds., 208--220, 1990.
  [CAM93] K. W. Campbell, M. J. Wiener, Proof the DES is Not a Group.
          In Proceedings of CRYPTO '92, 1993.
  [CAR86] John Carrol and Steve Martin, The Automated Cryptanalysis
          of Substitution Ciphers. Cryptologia 10(4), 193--209, 1986.
  [CAR87] John Carrol and Lynda Robbins, Automated Cryptanalysis of
          Polyalphabetic Ciphers. Cryptologia 11(4), 193--205, 1987.
  [ELL88] Carl M. Ellison, A Solution of the Hebern Messages. Cryptologia,
          vol. XII, #3, 144-158, Jul 1988.
  [EVE83] S. Even, O. Goldreich, DES-like functions can generate the
          alternating group. IEEE Trans. on Inform. Theory, vol. 29,
          #6, 863--865, 1983.
  [GAR91] G. Garon, R. Outerbridge, DES watch: an examination of the
          sufficiency of the Data Encryption Standard for financial
          institutions in the 1990's. Cryptologia, vol. XV, #3,
          177--193, 1991.
  [GIL80] Gillogly, ?. Cryptologia 4(2), 1980.
  [GM82]  Shafi Goldwasser, Silvio Micali, Probabilistic Encryption and
          How To Play Mental Poker Keeping Secret All Partial Information.
          Proceedings of the Fourteenth Annual ACM Symposium on Theory of
          Computing, 1982.
  [HUM83] D. G. N. Hunter and A. R. McKenzie, Experiments with
          Relaxation Algorithms for Breaking Simple Substitution
          Ciphers. Computer Journal 26(1), 1983.
  [KAM78] J. Kam, G. Davida, A structured design of substitution-
          permutation encryption networks. IEEE Trans. Information
          Theory, 28(10), 747--753, 1978.
  [KIN78] P. Kinnucan, Data encryption gurus: Tuchman and Meyer.
          Cryptologia, vol. II #4, 371--XXX, 1978.
  [KIN92] King and Bahler, Probabilistic Relaxation in the
          Cryptanalysis of Simple Substitution Ciphers. Cryptologia
          16(3), 215--225, 1992.
  [KIN93] King and Bahler, An Algorithmic Solution of Sequential
          Homophonic Ciphers. Cryptologia 17(2), in press.
  [KOC87] Martin Kochanski, A Survey of Data Insecurity Packages.
          Cryptologia 11(1), 1--15, 1987.
  [KOC88] Martin Kochanski, Another Data Insecurity Package.
          Cryptologia 12(3), 165--177, 1988.
  [KRU88] Kruh, ?. Cryptologia 12(4), 1988.
  [LAI90] X. Lai, J. Massey, A proposal for a new block encryption 
          standard. EUROCRYPT 90, 389--404, 1990.
  [LUB88] C. Rackoff, M. Luby, How to construct psuedorandom
          permutations from psuedorandom functions. SIAM Journal of
          Computing, vol. 17, #2, 373--386, 1988.
  [LUC88] Michael Lucks, A Constraint Satisfaction Algorithm for the
          Automated Decryption of Simple Substitution Ciphers. In
          CRYPTO '88.
  [MAS88] J. Massey, An introduction to contemporary cryptology.
          IEEE proceedings, 76(5), 533--549, 1988.
  [ME91a] R. Merkle, Fast software encryption functions. In Proceedings
          of CRYPTO '90, Menezes and Vanstone ed., 476--501, 1991.
  [MEY78] C. Meyer, Ciphertext/plaintext and ciphertext/key
          dependence vs. number of rounds for the Data Encryption
          Standard. AFIPS Conference proceedings, 47, 1119--1126,
          1978.
  [NBS77] Data Encryption Standard. National Bureau of Standards,
          FIPS PUB 46, Washington, DC, January 1977.
  [PEL79] S. Peleg and A. Rosenfeld, Breaking Substitution Ciphers
          Using a Relaxation Algorithm. CACM 22(11), 598--605, 1979.
  [REE77] J. Reeds, `Cracking' a Random Number Generator.
          Cryptologia 1(1), 20--26, 1977.
  [REE84] J. A. Reeds and P. J. Weinberger, File Security and the UNIX
          Crypt Command. AT&T Bell Laboratories Technical Journal,
          Vol. 63 #8, part 2, 1673--1684, October, 1984.
  [SHA49] C. Shannon, Communication Theory of Secrecy Systems. Bell
          System Technical Journal 28(4), 656--715, 1949.
  [SHE88] B. Kaliski, R. Rivest, A. Sherman, Is the Data Encryption
          Standard a Group. Journal of Cryptology, vol. 1, #1,
          1--36, 1988.
  [SHI88] A. Shimizu, S. Miyaguchi, Fast data encipherment algorithm
          FEAL. EUROCRYPT '87, 267--278, 1988.
  [SHI92] K. Shirriff, C. Welch, A. Kinsman, Decoding a VCR Controller
          Code. Cryptologia 16(3), 227--234, 1992.
  [SOR84] A. Sorkin, LUCIFER: a cryptographic algorithm.
          Cryptologia, 8(1), 22--35, 1984.
  [SPI93] R. Spillman et al., Use of Genetic Algorithms in
          Cryptanalysis of Simple Substitution Ciphers. Cryptologia
          17(1), 31--44, 1993.
        
10.5. Journals, conference proceedings

  CRYPTO
  Eurocrypt
  IEEE Transactions on Information Theory
  Cryptologia: a cryptology journal, quarterly since Jan 1977.
          Cryptologia; Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology; Terre Haute
          Indiana 47803 [general: systems, analysis, history, ...]
  Journal of Cryptology; International Association for Cryptologic
          Research; published by Springer Verlag (quarterly since
          1988).
  The Cryptogram (Journal of the American Cryptogram Association);
          18789 West Hickory Street; Mundelein, IL 60060; [primarily
          puzzle cryptograms of various sorts]
  Cryptosystems Journal, Published by Tony Patti, P.O. Box 188,
          Newtown PA, USA 18940-0188 or [EMAIL PROTECTED]
          Publisher's comment: Includes complete cryptosystems with
          source and executable programs on diskettes. Tutorial. The
          typical cryptosystems supports multi-megabit keys and Galois
          Field arithmetic. Inexpensive hardware random number
          generator details.
  Computer and Communication Security Reviews, published by Ross Anderson.
          Sample issue available from various ftp sites, including
          black.ox.ac.uk. Editorial c/o [EMAIL PROTECTED] Publisher's
          comment: We review all the conference proceedings in this field,
          including not just Crypto and Eurocrypt, but regional gatherings
          like Auscrypt and Chinacrypt. We also abstract over 50 journals,
          and cover computer security as well as cryptology, so readers can
          see the research trends in applications as well as theory.
  Infosecurity News, MIS Training Institute Press, Inc. 498 Concord Street
          Framingham MA 01701-2357. This trade journal is oriented toward 
          administrators and covers viruses, physical security, hackers, 
          and so on more than cryptology. Furthermore, most of the articles 
          are written by vendors and hence are biased.  Nevertheless, there 
          are occasionally some rather good cryptography articles.

10.6. Other

  Address of note: Aegean Park Press, P.O. Box 2837, Laguna Hills, CA
  92654-0837. Answering machine at 714-586-8811.  Toll Free at 800 736-
  3587, and FAX at 714 586-8269.

  The ``Orange Book'' is DOD 5200.28-STD, published December 1985 as
  part of the ``rainbow book'' series. Write to Department of Defense,
  National Security Agency, ATTN: S332, 9800 Savage Road, Fort Meade, MD
  20755-6000, and ask for the Trusted Computer System Evaluation
  Criteria. Or call 301-766-8729.

  The ``Orange Book'' will eventually be replaced by the U.S. Federal 
  Criteria for Information Technology Security (FC) online at the NIST
  site [FTPNS], which also contains information on other various proposed 
  and active federal standards.

  [BAMFD] Bamford, The Puzzle Palace. Penguin Books, 1982.
  [GOO83] I. J. Good, Good Thinking: the foundations of probability and
          its applications. University of Minnesota Press, 1983.
  [KNU81] D. E. Knuth, The Art of Computer Programming, volume 2:
          Seminumerical Algorithms. Addison-Wesley, 1981.
  [KUL68] Soloman Kullback, Information Theory and Statistics.
          Dover, 1968.
  [YAO88] A. Yao, Computational Information Theory. In Complexity in
          Information Theory, ed. by Abu-Mostafa, 1988.

10.7. How may one obtain copies of FIPS and ANSI standards cited herein?

  Many textbooks on cryptography contain complete reprints of the FIPS
  standards, which are not copyrighted.

  The following standards may be ordered from the
      U.S. Department of Commerce, National Technical Information Service,
      Springfield, VA 22161.

      FIPS PUB 46-1 Data Encryption Standard  (this is DES)
      FIPS PUB 74   Guidelines for Implementing as Using the NBS DES
      FIPS PUB 81   DES Modes of Operation
      FIPS PUB 113  Computer Data Authentication (using DES)

  [Note: The address below has been reported as invalid.]
  The following standards may be ordered from the
      American National Standards Institute Sales Office,
      1430 Broadway, New York, NY 10018.
      Phone 212.642.4900

      ANSI X3.92-1981  Data Encryption Algorithm (identical to FIPS 46-1)
      ANSI X3.106-1983 DEA Modes of Operation    (identical to FIPS 113)

  Notes:  Figure 3 in FIPS PUB 46-1 is in error, but figure 3 in X3.92-1981
      is correct. The text is correct in both publications.


10.8. Electronic sources

  Anonymous ftp:

  [FTPAL] kampi.hut.fi:alo/des-dist.tar.Z
  [FTPBK] ftp.uu.net:bsd-sources/usr.bin/des/
  [FTPCB] ftp.uu.net:usenet/comp.sources.unix/volume10/cbw/
  [FTPCP] soda.berkeley.edu:/pub/cypherpunks
  [FTPDF] ftp.funet.fi:pub/unix/security/destoo.tar.Z
  [FTPDQ] rsa.com:pub/faq/
  [FTPEY] ftp.psy.uq.oz.au:pub/DES/
  [FTPMD] rsa.com:?
  [FTPMR] ripem.msu.edu:pub/crypt/newdes.tar.Z
  [FTPNS] csrc.nist.gov:/bbs/nistpubs
  [FTPOB] ftp.3com.com:Orange-Book
  [FTPPF] prep.ai.mit.edu:pub/lpf/
  [FTPPK] ucsd.edu:hamradio/packet/tcpip/crypto/des.tar.Z
  [FTPPX] ripem.msu.edu:pub/crypt/other/tran-and-prngxor.shar
  [FTPRF] nic.merit.edu:documents/rfc/
  [FTPSF] beta.xerox.com:pub/hash/
  [FTPSO] chalmers.se:pub/unix/des/des-2.2.tar.Z
  [FTPTR] ripem.msu.edu:pub/crypt/other/tran-and-prngxor.shar
  [FTPUF] ftp.uu.net:usenet/comp.sources.unix/volume28/ufc-crypt/
  [FTPWP] garbo.uwasa.fi:pc/util/wppass2.zip

  World Wide Web pages:

  [WWWQC] http://www.quadralay.com/www/Crypt/Crypt.html
          Quadralay Cryptography archive
  [WWWVC] ftp://furmint.nectar.cs.cmu.edu/security/README.html
          Vince Cate's Cypherpunk Page 

10.9. RFCs (available from [FTPRF])

  [1424]  B. Kaliski, Privacy Enhancement for Internet Electronic Mail:
          Part IV: Key Certification and Related Services. RFC 1424,
          February 1993.
  [1423]  D. Balenson, Privacy Enhancement for Internet Electronic Mail:
          Part III: Algorithms, Modes, and Identifiers. RFC 1423,
          February 1993.
  [1422]  S. Kent, Privacy Enhancement for Internet Electronic Mail:
          Part II: Certificate-Based Key Management. RFC 1422, February
          1993.
  [1421]  J. Linn, Privacy Enhancement for Internet Electronic Mail:
          Part I: Message Encryption and Authentication Procedures. RFC
          1421, February 1993.

10.10. Related newsgroups

  There are other newsgroups which a sci.crypt reader might want also to
  read. Some have their own FAQs as well.

  alt.privacy.clipper           Clipper, Capstone, Skipjack, Key Escrow
  alt.security                  general security discussions
  alt.security.index            index to alt.security
  alt.security.pgp              discussion of PGP
  alt.security.ripem            discussion of RIPEM
  alt.society.civil-liberty     general civil liberties, including privacy
  comp.compression              discussion of compression algorithms and code
  comp.org.eff.news             News reports from EFF
  comp.org.eff.talk             discussion of EFF related issues
  comp.patents                  discussion of S/W patents, including RSA
  comp.risks                    some mention of crypto and wiretapping
  comp.society.privacy          general privacy issues
  comp.security.announce        announcements of security holes
  misc.legal.computing          software patents, copyrights, computer laws
  sci.math                      general math discussion
  talk.politics.crypto          politics of cryptography

------------------------------

From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (SCOTT19U.ZIP_GUY)
Subject: Re: NEC claims New Strongest Crypto Algor
Date: Sun, 30 Jan 2000 04:26:42 GMT

In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, "Douglas A. Gwyn" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>"SCOTT19U.ZIP_GUY" wrote:
>>   It would be quite possible to any one who exaimed my contest that in method
>> such as scott19u can have many fake keys. That is you encrypt your message
>> with the secret key of your choice. And than you create a false key be taking
>> some safe message and generating a key that would casue the fake message
>> to be mapped to the same cipher text. This is quite easy when one has over
>> a million bytes of key space for most messages. You could then leave the fake
>> key around for someone on a fishing expedition to find and they would think
>> they discovered something hot. But this whole approach relies on one useing
>> decent encryption. The short keyed AES methods that the NSA wants fools to
>> use would never have keys long enough to do this kind of real encryption.
>
>The only way this can work is for the key to have size comparable to
>the message.  Thus it suffers from the standard one-time pad key
>distribution problem.  Most practical applications of cryptology
>require that the key be much smaller than the protected data.

  No for two reasons. The user can use any size key up to the
max he wants. One does not have to use a long key. But to make
a false key if one needed one yes you are stuck with a long key.
 Two my encryption is not like a one time pad. A pair of users could
use there secret key for a very long time. It would be the false key
that would have to be unique for given messages. But it the NSA
was knocking on your door demanding for you to decode a given
message it would be nice to know you could generate a false one
so they would be out of luck. Also if they some how faked the data
like the FBI does you could create another key to make it look like
something else. If the message is such that different keys lead
to different message It would be harder for them to get a jury to
belive there lies. Not that any intellagent jurist would take there
word for anything after all the crooked stuff they have lied about
at Waco.

 


David A. Scott
--

SCOTT19U.ZIP NOW AVAILABLE WORLD WIDE
http://www.jim.com/jamesd/Kong/scott19u.zip
                    
Scott famous encryption website NOT FOR WIMPS
http://members.xoom.com/ecil/index.htm

Scott rejected paper for the ACM
http://members.xoom.com/ecil/dspaper.htm

Scott famous Compression Page WIMPS allowed
http://members.xoom.com/ecil/compress.htm

**NOTE EMAIL address is for SPAMERS***

I leave you with this final thought from President Bill Clinton:

   "The road to tyranny, we must never forget, begins with the destruction of the 
truth." 

------------------------------

From: "Chris Engstrom" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: ascii to binary
Date: Sat, 29 Jan 2000 21:55:19 -0600

This is exactly what i was looking for.  bitwise operations are what i am
looking to understand.
thank you very much for the example; from this i can get over tihs mental
block i've had now for quite a while concerning "Bitwise" operations.
I am a visual learner and until I saw how these processes actually worked, I
could only work off of theories and trust.  This made it very hard to move
ahead in my quest for understaning cryptography on computers.

thanks again



------------------------------

From: Nicol So <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Help needed on peculiar use of cryptography
Date: Sat, 29 Jan 2000 22:46:20 -0500
Reply-To: see.signature

"SCOTT19U.ZIP_GUY" wrote:
> 
> In article <86t26p$8vq$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, David A Molnar 
><[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >You might have the company pick a very long, fixed string and keep that
> >string secret. Then concatenate this string, or "salt", with each of
> >the ID numbers.
>       With a long string or salt as you call it you are risking that more
> than one ID could map to the same hash. In reality you can never fully
> hide the encrypted ID since it would have to be unique if it was to match
> unique records. I would not use a hash for this kind of work where zero
> collisions are required.

Collision is likely not a problem in practice, unless somebody insists
that the hash function be collsion-free (and I would question the
reasonableness of that requirement). A good cryptographic hash function
is supposed to be indistinguishable from a randomly chosen function with
the same domain/codomain. We can easily estimate the probablility of
collision by modeling the hash function as a random function.

In our current application, we are dealing with employee identifiers.
One million would be a safe overestimate for the number of employees in
most commercial organizations. If the hash values are 160 bits long, the
probability of collision is just negligible for all practical purposes.

-- 
Nicol So, CISSP // paranoid 'at' engineer 'dot' com
Disclaimer: Views expressed here are casual comments and should
not be relied upon as the basis for decisions of consequence.

------------------------------


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