Cryptography-Digest Digest #574, Volume #13 Sun, 28 Jan 01 05:13:01 EST
Contents:
Re: Dynamic Transposition Revisited (long) (John Savard)
1x-2x-3x coding (was Re: OOPS! ) (wtshaw)
Re: FISH (was Re: Some Enigma Questions) (Frode Weierud)
Re: Why Microsoft's Product Activation Stinks (Anthony Stephen Szopa)
Re: Why Microsoft's Product Activation Stinks (Anthony Stephen Szopa)
Re: Why Microsoft's Product Activation Stinks (Anthony Stephen Szopa)
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From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (John Savard)
Subject: Re: Dynamic Transposition Revisited (long)
Date: Sun, 28 Jan 2001 04:43:04 GMT
On Sat, 27 Jan 2001 22:42:59 GMT, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Terry Ritter) wrote,
in part:
>On Sat, 27 Jan 2001 05:46:44 GMT, in
><[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, in sci.crypt
>[EMAIL PROTECTED] (John Savard) wrote:
>>At least I now know my point has been understood, and I don't need to
>>explain the mathematics of it again.
>I believe it was I who explained to you that DES was not unable to
>select just "some" possible keys, but instead was not able to select
>virtually all of them. Shall I go back and quote in depth?
>>What remains in dispute, though, is my claim that what you have said
>>here, although true, is in no way a valid argument in favor of Dynamic
>>Transposition.
>Let me see; before, you were arguing (with wrong numbers) that the
>argument was not true. Now that I have shown the unarguable numbers,
>it's suddenly true, but not a valid argument. Hmmm.
>Have you already decided on the conclusions, such that any argument
>which does not reach them must be "in no way a valid argument"?
I had no problem accepting that DES cannot produce all (2^64)!
possible codebooks. As soon as you first said that, I agreed, as it is
something obviously true.
The point I was trying to make was that transposing bits doesn't
produce all possible codebooks of balanced blocks, and it looked to
me, until the post I replied to, that that wasn't clear.
That all possible codebooks, and not all possible transpositions, is
the proper equivalent to all possible codebooks in DES is the point I
have been - repetitiously - dealing with. So I don't think I've
retreated in any way from what I have been saying.
>>As you've noted, one small error causes people to neglect what is
>>valid, and this is why I'm pounding on this one point - I believe I'm
>>not the only one who would see this error, but most of the others have
>>already stopped paying attention to your work.
>Is it just me, or is it really strange to have the belief that you
>know what others think and what others are doing and why?
I am not a mindreader! No! I am one of the evil brainwashed zombies
created by Bruce Schneier and the NSA! That's how I know what the
other zombies think!
I'm sorry to have to get silly on you, but although I'm a bit more of
an independent thinker than the real "crypto gods", I still respect
their knowledge and expertise, and understand the reasoning behind the
conventional position.
Yes, when I see what appear to me to be errors, I'm fierce in getting
my point across. Not because I want to discredit your work. Because I
want to get those errors out of the way, so that they won't interfere
with the entrance of your contributions to the mainstream of the
science.
>>Neither a block cipher nor transposition provides all possible
>>substitutions of input blocks to output blocks.
>A transposition does not provide all substitutions? What is wrong
>with this picture?
>Since a substitution cipher *does* substitutions, it is not entirely
>unreasonable to expect it to do all of them.
>Since a transposition cipher does *not* do substitutions, it is quite
>*un*reasonable to expect that.
>With such an argument, you are being unreasonable, as well as
>irrelevant.
>From the Opponent's point of view, if Cipher 1 takes general blocks IN
and puts general blocks OUT, and Cipher 2 takes balanced blocks IN and
puts general blocks OUT, the fact that neither cipher 1 nor cipher 2
produces all possible input block/output block codebooks is what
counts.
That Cipher 1 fails to do so because it is four rounds of DES, and
Cipher 2 fails to do so because it is a transposition ... well, while
the detailed structure of the cipher one is attacking is very
important to the cryptanalyst, being a transposition is not some kind
of "excuse".
>Since Dynamic Transposition provides all of its strength in the
>original design, it does not need to be multiple ciphered with itself.
>And, indeed, multiple ciphering with itself alone will not provide
>additional strength. (I just note that we could design a Dynamic
>Transposition cipher with a real keyspace of tens of thousands of
>bits, were that to be desirable.)
>How is being too strong suddenly a weakness, and how is this any sort
>of reasonable argument at all?
Not being able to _gain_ strength is a weakness. "Being too strong" is
the part of your claim that is false, because 4096! is not as big as
(2^64)! ... because 'all possible transpositions' is only one step
better than 'all possible XORs' and is no better than 'all possible
two-round DES encipherments'.
>>In other words, I'm substituting small portions of the block with
>>other substitutes that have the same number of 1 bits.
>>Now I'm producing substitutions of input block to output block that
>>can't be reached by transposition alone. Have I _weakened_ the cipher?
>Since that does not describe "the cipher" -- Dynamic Transposition --
>it would be hard to say whether it was "weakened" or not.
>But in a 3-level system consisting of transposition -> substitution ->
>transposition, arbitrary substitutions *do* weaken the last
>transposition level, if the substitution outputs are not bit-balanced.
Yes, that's why I chose the substitution that wouldn't do that.
>If your position is that Dynamic Transposition is bad because we can't
>multi-cipher with itself alone and gain strength, well, by gosh! I
>guess you got me. (I note that the current design is internally
>limited to "only" a 992-bit keyspace. But I guess that is not enough,
>since multiple ciphering has somehow become so important.)
Well, it *does* take more than 992 bits to describe a codebook with
2^64 entries, doesn't it?
>What I think is that you have this idea for a cipher of your own --
>not Dynamic Transposition at all, but using transposition -- which you
>would really prefer to discuss but just have not done so. The result
>is that it gets tangled into the discussion of Dynamic Transposition
>in ways that are difficult to separate. Don't do that. If you want
>to discuss your design, put it out in a forthright manner.
Well, I pointed you at my 'Large-Key Brainstorm'. I'm saying that two
transpositions are _roughly_ comparable to four rounds of DES, except
that Dynamic Transposition can be scaled up to much larger block
sizes.
So I am comparing DT to 'another cipher', basically in respect of my
original argument that the (admittedly, trifling) bandwidth cost of DT
is _unnecessary_ since DT can be equalled in the substitution world.
And this is why I raised the subject of _perfect_ bit-balancing
conversions, so as to allow DT to be multi-ciphered with substitution
systems, so it _can_ make a contribution by means of its different
algebraic structure.
Your basic argument for why DT is important mentions the OTP - which
(no, I didn't get this from an Ouija board) raises a red "Snake Oil!"
flag for the conventionally-minded - and then has what I believe to be
basic flaws, and flaws of a nature as to be apparent to more
individuals than merely myself. Which is why, I fear, some people may
not have read any further (this, admittedly, is speculation) and why
there are not certain other newsgroup regulars raising points in
respect of Dynamic Transposition, critical or otherwise.
John Savard
http://home.ecn.ab.ca/~jsavard/crypto.htm
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (wtshaw)
Subject: 1x-2x-3x coding (was Re: OOPS! )
Date: Sun, 28 Jan 2001 01:17:33 -0600
In article <Ckxc6.1432$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, "Michael Brown"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> hint to wtshaw revised: remember reverse __Wallace__ tree adding scheme
Meanwhie, back at the ranch (greetings to Sky King affectionadoes),
betwixt rounds or proofreading my book on strokes, and speaking of trees,
not mere mesquites populating once free and rolling hills fo buffalo days,
I have toyed with simple means of turning dithers into text coded
patterns. For the time, I prefer simple transforms given the above
referenced alternative.
Perfect morse requires that dahs be the three times the length of dits,
intervals between dits and dahs within a character be the length of a dit,
and that a space between letters and words be identifyably longer.
But, for simple compressed morse coded representation, with a acknowledged
lid sound if it were to be heard, in a picture, a dit can be one pixel, a
dah can be two pixels, space between characters can be two pixels, between
words, three pixels. While left to right representation is expected, many
routes are viable in a picture, even the whole block of x by y pixels, one
bit of monkeying per pixel.
Harking back to older coding that used more that two sounds, a three sound
system with 1,2,3 lengths could be used: With a maximum of 333, or
1110111011100, for a character, the tree has 40 terminated branches,
lengths of one to thirteen bits/pixels long.
Other natural trees are easy to make too, but a 40 character set is useful
in that I have base translation cipher Sappa, Pt set of 100, and Secure
Message, a 40x250 implementation of the GVA, both of which use a ct set of
40. With some simple onscreen pixel changes via a easily cobled dedicated
graphics program, I should be able to semiautomatically punched out some
interesting stegnography, don't hold your breath. The characteristic
profile of data should be visually unfamiliar, but have a maximum of 3 or
111, and of 000, good for big dither.
A 41st character could be added to separate multiple blocks if desired,
but 250 characters is a nice sized block to have as a basic maximum size.
For plaintext, the 40 character assignements can be frequency-length
optomized, slightly compressed, and a 41st character for a blank line in
text is possible.
--
Some people say what they think will impress you, but ultimately
do as they please. If their past shows this, don't expect a change.
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Frode Weierud)
Subject: Re: FISH (was Re: Some Enigma Questions)
Date: 28 Jan 2001 08:45:44 GMT
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Jim Haynes) writes:
>>
>Did they break STURGEON by other means? Or did it go unbroken? What
>was the relative importance of TUNNY vs. STURGEON?
Yes, it was broken by hand methods. I presume you are referring to the
Allied attacks against this machine as the machine was also broken by the
Swedes, who really was in a position to benefit from the breaks. Bletchley
Park also broke the Siemens T52 machines including the T52d but they
had only access to traffic that went over radio and this traffic was
meager to say the least.
You can read about all this and more in my article "Sturgeon, The FISH
BP Never Really Caught" which has been published in the Springer book
"Coding Theory and Cryptography: From Enigma and Geheimschreiber to Quantum
Theory", ed. Professor David Joyner, 2000, ISBN 3-540-66336-3.
The book also contains Professor William Tuttes's paper "FISH and I" as well
as my updated translation of Lars Ulfving's paper "The Geheimschreiber
Secret: Arne Beurling and the Success of Swedish Signals Intelligence".
This updated version contains all the photos which are missing in my
Web version as well as many new details about Swedish codebreaking which
have been added in a postscript to the translation.
Full details about the book with a list of contents are available on my
Web page at http://frode.home.cern.ch/frode/crypto/
Frode Weierud
--
Frode Weierud Phone : +41 22 7674794
CERN, SL, CH-1211 Geneva 23, Fax : +41 22 7679185
Switzerland E-mail : [EMAIL PROTECTED]
WWW : home.cern.ch/frode/
------------------------------
From: Anthony Stephen Szopa <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: or.politics,talk.politics.crypto,misc.survivalism
Subject: Re: Why Microsoft's Product Activation Stinks
Date: Sun, 28 Jan 2001 01:13:39 -0800
Splaat23 wrote:
>
> Is that really your question? The answer is, of course, that Microsoft
> intends to stop piracy of its software. It looks to take a half-baked
> idea and push it as the source of all salvation. We've seen this
> before, as Microsoft executives have little imagination. Sometimes it
> works, sometimes it doesn't - Microsoft has a lot of weight to push
> things where they want them.
>
> However, what is different is that in this case, they are pushing an
> illusion. Everyone here knows that the most this will do is stop a few
> idiots from pirating (an unnoticable % of the total piracy), and annoy
> thousands to millions of users during installs, reinstalls, and
> hardware changes. Microsoft will spend lots of money on tech support to
> handle issuing new keys to people whose configuration changes, and in
> turn transmit those costs back to users in even higher prices.
>
> If Microsoft advertised that this new feature would increase prices and
> annoy users, do you think we'd buy it? No! But instead, they advertise
> that this is necessary to prevent piracy and will result in lower
> prices.
>
> - Andrew
>
> In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
> Anthony Stephen Szopa <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > Splaat23 wrote:
> > >
> > > An interesting question for you, Mr. Szopa, that is very relevant to
> > > this discussion is the following: Do you really believe that anti-
> > > piracy in Microsoft's or your manner can actually be successful?
> > >
> > > Because I don't, and if your "invention" doesn't work, then who
> really
> > > cares if Microsoft stole it from you or not.
> > >
> > > - Andrew
> > >
> > > In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
> > > Anthony Stephen Szopa <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > > Just about nothing.
> > >
> > > Sent via Deja.com
> > > http://www.deja.com/
> >
> > I will ask you what I have asked before: tell us, what is MS's goal
> > by implementing this anti-piracy feature?
> >
> > Then I will answer your question.
> >
>
> Sent via Deja.com
> http://www.deja.com/
Why are you wasting your time asking me such questions, anyway?
Most likely, MS will automate the entire key process unless certain
flags are raised. These questionable requests for new keys will be
handled more thoroughly and of course at greater cost to MS.
Their is a certain level at which MS's anti-piracy "innovation" will
be worth it. I think the break even will be if MS stops as little
as one or two percent of its OS piracy. And I think their scheme
will accomplish this and much more.
Its time has come and I won't get a penny from it, it seems.
But it is MS's partners and the Industry's mistake if they adopt
MS's anti-piracy feature as the Industry standard without allowing
an immediate cancellation of the agreement if a newer and better
anti-piracy scheme is thought of in the future.
It is a big mistake to allow MS to control anti-piracy for the
entire Industry with their "innovation." It could lead to no
competition and a less than optimum solution if a better solution
comes along.
I think it is a no brainer that MS will do all it can to protect
its revenue and power and will forcefully attempt to thwart any
competition for another anti-piracy scheme even if it is obviously
better.
For BG it is all about MS and has always been so.
The Industry should beware.
I am posting in a separate thread some preliminary evidence
supporting my claim that I invented the anti-piracy scheme upon
which MS based its own.
I am slowly digging up my records.
But I am editing some I post and not posting some as well.
------------------------------
From: Anthony Stephen Szopa <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: talk.politics.crypto
Subject: Re: Why Microsoft's Product Activation Stinks
Date: Sun, 28 Jan 2001 01:15:29 -0800
Matthew Montchalin wrote:
>
> On Sat, 27 Jan 2001, Anthony Stephen Szopa wrote:
> |I will ask you as I have done before to others, are you thinking
> |about attacking my encryption theory or are you desirous of
> |attacking my implementation of the theory?
> |
> |If you agree that my encryption theory is unassailable then we can
> |discuss the source code.
>
> An interesting proposition. I actually posted my own source code
> around June or so. Do you think *my* source code is unassailable,
> and any theory that can be extracted from it or described by it?
>
> |But if you cannot successfully trash my encryption theory then admit
> |it or show us.
> |
> |The theory is explained thoroughly in the Help Files available at my
> |web site.
>
> How about putting up a real BBS independent of the web? I am curious
> what your theory looks like, but I really hate using the web just to
> go there.
Then have one of your lackeys get the Help Files for you.
------------------------------
From: Anthony Stephen Szopa <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: or.politics,talk.politics.crypto,misc.survivalism
Subject: Re: Why Microsoft's Product Activation Stinks
Date: Sun, 28 Jan 2001 01:23:16 -0800
wtshaw wrote:
>
> In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Anthony Stephen Szopa
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >
> > MS is losing a bundle on its software being pirated. You are just
> > spamming when you ask who would want MSs software. The answer is
> > just about everybody, especially if its free.
>
> MS has made a bundle selling insufficient and badly designed products.
> Amount of payment may have little connection to quality. Hype DOES seem
> to work, AOL too.
>
> But, crap is still crap, and transparently show the folly of being
> dependant on it through its catastrophic and predictable failures. So
> many find themselves stupidly tethered, and suffer so much for the greed
> of so few. You too can buy deficient updates, sucker.
>
> Swallowing the poor state of affairs only speaks for the irrational
> tendency of so many to be sheep in a wolf's pen, blinded until harvested,
> too late if it turns out to be mutton instead of wool.
> --
> Some people say what they think will impress you, but ultimately
> do as they please. If their past shows this, don't expect a change.
I always appreciate your replies but I see no way around this:
MS products perform.
This cannot be denied. All the ones I use perform quite well.
I think I know what it is: jealousy and fear.
We can all understand the jealousy but the fear is highlighted by the
Netscape example. Andreesen and Netscape were worth hundreds of
millions of dollars at one time if not significantly more.
By Netscape just complained about the writing on the wall. It saw it
coming.
So why did they not hire software engineers and pay them to develope
a first rate OS to compete with MS's?
I say the reason was fear. And look where it got them. As it
turned out, they really had nothing to lose but they didn't even
try.
------------------------------
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