Cryptography-Digest Digest #271, Volume #11 Tue, 7 Mar 00 08:13:01 EST
Contents:
Re: PGP for AS/400?? ("Paul Nicolay")
Re: why xor?(look out,newbie question! :) (Mok-Kong Shen)
Re: 'Free' services with tokens/puzzles (Mok-Kong Shen)
Re: ascii to binary (Vernon Schryver)
Re: sci.crypt Cipher Contest (Quisquater)
Re: why xor?(look out,newbie question! :) (Samuel Paik)
Re: The Voynich manuscript ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
Re: The Voynich manuscript ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
CFV: sci.crypt.random-numbers (Dave Cornejo)
An RC5-like cipher (Samuel Paik)
RSA Cryptography Today FAQ (1/1) ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
Re: ...but what about my cipher? (Runu Knips)
Re: ascii to binary ("Alan J. Flavell")
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: "Paul Nicolay" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: alt.security.pgp,comp.security.pgp,comp.sys.ibm.as400.misc
Subject: Re: PGP for AS/400??
Date: Tue, 7 Mar 2000 09:00:24 +0100
Hi Don,
For PGP it doesn't matter if it's ASCII or EBCDIC... the input stream is
binary, so after encoding and decoding the same binary data stream should
come out of the algorithm. Offcourse, this all presumes that the target
system is an AS/400 as well.
If you want to transfer PGP encoded data to another system, the issue of
ASCII and EBCDIC comes into place, but not at the level of PGP. It's just
an overall issue, and the same thing happens when you use FTP for example
(an EBCDIC encoded file in the IFS will also be unreadable on the PC)
As far as I've heard, PGP has been ported to OS/400 by someone, but it seems
that there was a licensing issue with the makers of PGP ?
Regards,
Paul
===============
Don wrote in message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>...
Walt,
Actually, it's not been ported probably because nobody's had the time to do
it and
to do the ascii/ebcdic concerns as well...also, keep in mind that on a 400,
you've got fun things
like packed, binary, and date type fields that make for a interesting
buggaboo when doing
data type conversions...unless you expand the record to a full character
(zoned data) format then convert
and PGP it...oy!
As for the closedness of the database, depends on your definition of
"closed". EBCDIC is about as standard as
ASCII....please explain what you mean by "closed". ...and a flat file is a
flat file in either architecture...
There's a few of us that have given it some thought, but we're just up to
our asses in client projects right
now... But the idea of a ebcdic version of PGP is very viable...but your
target would also have to be a ebcidic
box or you'll have to go through the same kinda data type translations that
the PKZIP/400 guys are doing.
Also, since most of the C code is readily available, this should be easier
than going from scratch...but, thought has
also been given to writing it in MI....and this may also come up at the MI
BOF at Common next week...
I WOULD be nice if IBM would make it part of the cipher instruct and support
it....but, oh well..:)
Don
The contents of this message express only the sender's opinion.
This message does not necessarily reflect the policy or views of
my employer, Merck & Co., Inc. All responsibility for the statements
made in this Usenet posting resides solely and completely with the
sender.
------------------------------
From: Mok-Kong Shen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: why xor?(look out,newbie question! :)
Date: Tue, 07 Mar 2000 11:02:49 +0100
Joseph Ashwood wrote:
>
> x86 and everyone else. Actually that's not quite true, most
> new processor designs support both directions, but the OS
> chooses one or the other.
I don't understand. From my (certainly outdated) knowledge, a
manufacturer issues a document where the arithmetic instructions
are described. These are certainly dependent on a single type
of the ordering of the 'high' and 'low' bytes. So one manufacturer
couldn't belong to both groups, I suppose.
M. K. Shen
------------------------------
From: Mok-Kong Shen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: 'Free' services with tokens/puzzles
Date: Tue, 07 Mar 2000 11:02:22 +0100
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>
> >I am afraid it could be quite difficult to
> >assure getting 'verifiable' information in any such cases, if one
> >considers the fact that the system clock can be arbitrarily set.
>
> I does not have to be diffult. It is just a matter of synchronizing threads.
> The server should of course ask for the contents of the register at a
> specific stage of execution, not at a specific time.
I admit that I hadn't correctly understood your requirements.
I thought your were operating in a fairly innocent environment.
>From the other follow-ups, I learned that this is not the case
and that you want a large task to be done distributed by a
number of clients who only 'promise' to work for you.
I don't have a good solution. But I think that you need very good
(centralized) management. You have to ensure that the version of
the software installed is not manipulated. There seems however
to be no way to absolutely guarantee that. But, assuming
all tasks (actually sub-tasks into which your problem is divided)
are of the same type, you could, as others have already suggested,
though having the same task done by a number of (randomly chosen)
clients and checking for identical results get a correspondingly
high probability that the solutions are correct. But you would
never get 'absolute' certainty of no falsification by malicious
clients, I am convinced.
M. K. Shen
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Vernon Schryver)
Subject: Re: ascii to binary
Date: 6 Mar 2000 20:15:31 -0700
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
wtshaw <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> Didn't cards have 12 rows and 80 columns for decades before the 96-column
>> cards arrived in the 1970's? Weren't the twelve holes on the classic
>> punched cards labeled 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 0, + and - (at least
>> by how you would punch individual holes to generate non-standard
>> combinations).
>
>I saved some of the blanks when I disposed of the boxes and boxes of cards
>long ago. In fact a couple are under my desk top. No, just ten rows and
>eighty columns.
Please count again, paying particular attention the two unlabeled rows
about the zero row. Or explain what my yellow "System/370 Reference
Summary," official IBM issue, 4th edition, Nov. 1976, means when by the
"12" and "11" tokens in the "Card Code EBCDIC" column in the "Code
Translation Table." Or find a keypunch somewhere, and see what holes you
get when you punch "0123456789A", particularly for the "A" which I think
will be punched as 12-1. Or if your cards are punched and have
the equivalent text printed ("interpolated"--it's been decades), look
for any of "A" through "R".
My recollection about the names of the 11 and 12 punches may be wrong.
The yellow card says '+' was a 12-0-7-8 punch, so I can't explain my
memories of using '-' and '+' for over-punches.
> Punching too many holes tended to cause the cards to
>self-distruct.
Yes, but that was "too many holes" instead of "any of the valid holes."
>...
>> I also don't agree that paper tape had only 7 useful bits. Using a
>> computer talking to Model 33, 35, and 35 ASR TTY's as well as Western
>> Electric and other paper tape punches, I've punched many cases of rolls
>> of paper (as well as paper-mylar and mylar) tape with 8-bit bytes.
>> Sometimes the 8th bit was merely parity, but most of the time each frame
>> carried 8 full bits of data, with a longitudinal checksum of some kind
>> before and/or after a block of frames.
>>
>My old 1620 Books describes the tape device and has pictures.
I'm sure that's very nice, but what do you mean by *the* tape device?
Far more than one model from one vendor used paper tape. Paper tape was
a very common low speed medium from at least the 1960's when I started in
the business until the late 1970's. The closest to a universal paper
format were the 5 and 8 level standards that Teletype (i.e. Ma Bell)
defined for TTY's. Minicomputer vendors of the 1970's tended to define
their own formats. When dealing with binary, the people defining paper
tape formats were not happy to make the tape 14% longer by spending 1 bit
in every frame on parity.
--
Vernon Schryver [EMAIL PROTECTED]
------------------------------
From: Quisquater <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: sci.crypt Cipher Contest
Date: Tue, 07 Mar 2000 12:00:58 +0100
Maybe it's time to see at
http://cryptonessie.org
------------------------------
From: Samuel Paik <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: why xor?(look out,newbie question! :)
Date: Tue, 07 Mar 2000 10:44:13 GMT
John Savard wrote:
> The Power PC chip and the forthcoming Itanium chip from Intel are
> examples of processors that support both directions.
Most RISC architectures are bi-endian--they usually started out big-endian
but bi-endianess turns out to be very cheap to add.
--
Samuel S. Paik | http://www.webnexus.com/users/paik/
3D and multimedia, architecture and implementation
You dont know enough about X86 or kernel architectures to argue with me.
- <38b2dc12$0$[EMAIL PROTECTED]> "Leon Trotsky" to Terje Mathisen
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: The Voynich manuscript
Date: Tue, 07 Mar 2000 10:51:03 GMT
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
Mok-Kong Shen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> >
> > RULES IN THE Voynich MANUSCRIPT
> > by
> > Antoine CASANOVA
>
> Your meterial is probably way beyond the level of my humble
> knowledge, hence I haven't attempted to read it in detail.
> But I like nonetheless to pose a few general dumb questions.
>
> 1. You use the term 'universal language'. What is the
> definition of that? Are natural languages universal?
> If not, why?
>
> 2. Is 'synthetic language' synonym of 'artificial language'?
> Can an artificial language be universal? If yes, under
> which conditions?
1. & 2.) See the Jim Reeds' answer.
>
> 3. Are you determining (or have you determined) the structure of
> the grammar used in the text? If not, how do you know that you
> have identified any language in which the text is written?
I haven't identified any language, just structures.
>
> 4. What is a 'term' and a 'dimension'? Are these synonyms of
> 'word' and 'length'?
Term is synonym to vocable, not to word.
Dimension is equal to length.
>
> Thanks.
>
> M. K. Shen
>
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: The Voynich manuscript
Date: Tue, 07 Mar 2000 10:53:04 GMT
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
Mok-Kong Shen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Douglas A. Gwyn schrieb:
> >
> > [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> > > Conclusion
> > > The terms of the Voynich manuscript are built from synthetic
> > > rules which exclude the assumption from the use of a natural
> > > language for its writing.
> >
> > From the detailed article, it appears that you merely fit a
> > statistical model to the Voynich text, abstracted a few rules
> > from the result, then applied the rules *yourself* to generate
> > synthetic text. The same could be done for any body of text
> > written in any natural language, so you have *not* shown that
> > the VMS cannot be using a natural language.
>
There is probably a natural language which is subjacent within the
manuscript but on which level of abstraction is there? When a
sequence of symbols can be represented by synthetic rules of
construction, I do not think as this sequence is natural. It is
precisely the difference which exists between an perfect order and
deterministic (Crystals) and an order on which carry out
nondeterministic external factors (Th�roie of the chaos/L-system...).
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
------------------------------
From: Dave Cornejo <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Crossposted-To: news.announce.newgroups,news.groups,sci.electronics.misc,sci.physics
Subject: CFV: sci.crypt.random-numbers
Date: Tue, 07 Mar 2000 12:14:47 GMT
FIRST CALL FOR VOTES (of 2)
unmoderated group sci.crypt.random-numbers
Newsgroups line:
sci.crypt.random-numbers Generating cryptographic strength randomness.
Votes must be received by 23:59:59 UTC, 28 Mar 2000.
This vote is being conducted by a neutral third party. Questions
about the proposed group should be directed to the proponent.
Proponent: Scott Nelson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Votetaker: Dave Cornejo <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
RATIONALE: sci.crypt.random-numbers
Over the years, there's been a lot of traffic on this topic in
sci.crypt, and it makes sense to split it off into it's own
sub-group, both to relieve the pressure on sci.crypt,
and so more people who are interested in just the randomness
part and not the cryptography part of the topic can find it.
It was once believed that there would be support for a broader
version of this group, which could handle traffic for all aspects
of randomness, not just cryptographic strength randomness.
At this time however, there seems to be insufficient consensus on
where in the hierarchy such a group should go.
CHARTER: sci.crypt.random-numbers
Sci.crypt.random-numbers is for the discussion of cryptographic
strength random number generators, both "true" (hardware) and
"pseudo" (software), and anything else related to the science
of cryptographic strength randomness. Fit topics include but
are not limited to;
* New designs for and questions about hardware and software
random number generators.
* Questions about the nature of randomness and the definition of
randomness.
This is NOT a place to post lists of random-numbers.
END CHARTER.
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Voting question & problems: Dave Cornejo <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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------------------------------
From: Samuel Paik <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: An RC5-like cipher
Date: Tue, 07 Mar 2000 12:21:37 GMT
Here is a cipher that is a like RC5, but can be implemented with fewer
instructions that RC5 for block sizes greater than 16 bits, on the
Atmel AVR architecture. I do not have a clue to the security of this
cipher, although I believe that n rounds of this cipher is at least
as strong as n-2 round RC5.
RC5 encryption is as follows:
A = A + S[0];
B = B + S[1];
for (i = 2; i <= 2*R+1; i++)
{
A = A ^ B;
A = ROTL(A, B); /* Rotate A left by B bits */
A = A + S[i];
SWAP(A, B); /* Swap contents of A and B */
}
Eliminate whitening step and reorder operations.
for (i = 0; i <= 2*R+1; i++)
{
B = B + S[i];
A = A ^ B;
A = ROTL(A, B);
SWAP(A, B);
}
Here are the operations of one round RC5 and one round "New" cipher.
They are identical except for the exact indices into the key array and the
additional addition that gets applied to A and B each in RC5.
RC5 "New"
A = A + S[0];
B = B + S[1]; B = B + S[0];
A = A ^ B; A = A ^ B;
A = ROTL(A, B); A = ROTL(A, B);
A = A + S[2]; A = A + S[1];
B = B ^ A; B = B ^ A;
B = ROTL(B, A); B = ROTL(B, A);
B = B + S[3];
I believe I have an implementation of the decoding in 26 instructions for
the architecture under discussion, for block sizes of any power of 2 bytes
up to 256 bytes, with some alignment restrictions. This does not include
any CBC or CFB processing. What if you use the ciphertext from the previous
block as S[0] and S[1] and increase the number of rounds by one--this would
be sort of like CBC mode.
Does this cipher already have a name?
--
Samuel S. Paik | http://www.webnexus.com/users/paik/
3D and multimedia, architecture and implementation
You dont know enough about X86 or kernel architectures to argue with me.
- <38b2dc12$0$[EMAIL PROTECTED]> "Leon Trotsky" to Terje Mathisen
------------------------------
Crossposted-To:
talk.politics.crypto,alt.security.ripem,sci.answers,talk.answers,alt.answers,news.answers
Subject: RSA Cryptography Today FAQ (1/1)
from: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
reply-to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: 07 Mar 2000 12:34:52 GMT
Archive-name: cryptography-faq/rsa/part1
Last-modified: 1997/05/21
An old version of the RSA Labs' publication "Answers to Frequently Asked
Questions about Today's Cryptography" used to be posted here until May
1997. These postings were not sponsored or updated by RSA Labs, and
for some time we were unable to stop them. While we hope the information
in our FAQ is useful, the version that was being posted here was quite
outdated. The latest version of the FAQ is more complete and up-to-date.
Unfortunately, our FAQ is no longer available in ASCII due to its
mathematical content. Please visit our website at
http://www.rsa.com/rsalabs/ to view the new version of the FAQ with your
browser or download it in the Adobe Acrobat (.pdf) format.
RSA Labs FAQ Editor
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 07 Mar 2000 13:37:11 +0100
From: Runu Knips <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: ...but what about my cipher?
[EMAIL PROTECTED] schrieb:
> Why not? All you have to do is to place the Linux partition on your HD (or
> some other partition you never use) in the clipboard and paste it. ;-)
Unused Linux partitions ?!?!?
Sounds like a beggar which never touches the millions on
his bank account...
(I'm using Linux everytime I can !)
------------------------------
From: "Alan J. Flavell" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: ascii to binary
Date: Tue, 7 Mar 2000 13:32:25 +0100
On Tue, 7 Mar 2000, Anne & Lynn Wheeler wrote:
> http://www.cs.uiowa.edu/~jones/cards/codes.html
I dimly remember being at one installation where they used
binary punched cards. But the card readers themselves were unable
to handle this (they could only read BCD characters).
The binary cards were read in the card punch, by "punching" them full
of blanks and then passing them through the punch's check-read station
and picking up the "punching errors".
I've no idea how common this practice was.
all the best
------------------------------
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