Cryptography-Digest Digest #133, Volume #14 Fri, 13 Apr 01 07:13:01 EDT
Contents:
Graphical representation of a public key (or fingerprint)? ("Michael Schmidt")
Re: Elliptic Curves ("dexMilano")
Re: Elliptic Curves ("dexMilano")
Re: Graphical representation of a public key (or fingerprint)? ("dexMilano")
Re: _"Good" school in Cryptography ("was" I got accepted) (Frank Gerlach)
Re: I got accepted (Mok-Kong Shen)
Re: How good is steganography in the real world? (Mok-Kong Shen)
NSA-Endorsed Schools have a Mediocre Internet Presence (Frank Gerlach)
Re: Endianness of MARS ("Brian Gladman")
Re: Graphical representation of a public key (or fingerprint)? ("Ben Burge")
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: "Michael Schmidt" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Graphical representation of a public key (or fingerprint)?
Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2001 10:19:19 +0200
Hi,
I know that there has been research on the topic "graphical passwords", i.e.
keys being created from graphical user input.
I'm wondering whether there has been any research conducted on the topic
"graphical representation of a public key" or the key's fingerprint. My goal
is to authenticate a public key (or better: its fingerprint, like with PGP)
securely by creating and comparing its graphical representation with an
"original", which is unique enough for every key/fingerprint, yet easy to be
processed and compared by the human brain.
Thanks,
Michael
--
===================================================
Michael Schmidt
===================================================
Institute for Data Communications Systems
University of Siegen, Germany
www.nue.et-inf.uni-siegen.de
===================================================
http: www.nue.et-inf.uni-siegen.de/~schmidt/
e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
phone: +49 271 740-2332 fax: +49 271 740-2536
mobile: +49 173 3789349
===================================================
### Siegen - The Arctic Rain Forest ###
===================================================
------------------------------
From: "dexMilano" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Elliptic Curves
Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2001 10:29:09 +0200
sorry,
could you share the refence?
I' had a look to the certicom online tutorial, but it is not available a
dowlable version and I can't spent hour connected (a pdf file could be
easily read on my Palm !)
dex
"Brice Canvel" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ha scritto nel messaggio
news:oslB6.6642$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> Thank you for your help.
>
> Brice.
>
> "Brice Canvel" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
> news:l1cB6.5415$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> > Hi,
> >
> > I am looking for a good introduction on elliptic curves and also
> > maybe something a bit more detailed too once i have understood the
> > generalitites of it. I did a search on Google but it came up with
> > hundreds of pages and i thought one of you might have come across
> > something good.
> >
> > Thank you,
> >
> > Brice.
> >
>
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> Version: PGPfreeware 7.0.3 for non-commercial use <http://www.pgp.com>
>
> iQA/AwUBOtXi+MFxN8+cI7QXEQLrLACg1AyMxHND9QHhz9t+x1TcAgpvDYcAoN9b
> wLVU+Y/mxr4HKsPmCR5+lnzZ
> =FgkT
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
>
>
>
------------------------------
From: "dexMilano" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Elliptic Curves
Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2001 10:34:36 +0200
where can I find your papers?
dex
"DJohn37050" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ha scritto nel messaggio
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> If you want a book on ECC arithmetic as used in cryptosystem, Alfred
Menezes
> wrote one, this is much more detailed and complex than the papers
mentioned.
> Don Johnson
------------------------------
From: "dexMilano" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Graphical representation of a public key (or fingerprint)?
Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2001 10:38:53 +0200
I made a simple try a couple of months ago.
On Palm there is a tool that let you compare signatures (Sign on).
Why not use signature's data to crypt information?
The problem is that signateures are not equal and also comparison ha some
interval (does it make sense?)
As you know the key should be exaclty the same to crypt and decrypt.
The try so was not succesful.
dex
"Michael Schmidt" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ha scritto nel
messaggio news:9b6cu7$7scub$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> Hi,
>
> I know that there has been research on the topic "graphical passwords",
i.e.
> keys being created from graphical user input.
>
> I'm wondering whether there has been any research conducted on the topic
> "graphical representation of a public key" or the key's fingerprint. My
goal
> is to authenticate a public key (or better: its fingerprint, like with
PGP)
> securely by creating and comparing its graphical representation with an
> "original", which is unique enough for every key/fingerprint, yet easy to
be
> processed and compared by the human brain.
>
>
>
> Thanks,
>
> Michael
>
>
> --
> ===================================================
> Michael Schmidt
> ---------------------------------------------------
> Institute for Data Communications Systems
> University of Siegen, Germany
> www.nue.et-inf.uni-siegen.de
> ---------------------------------------------------
> http: www.nue.et-inf.uni-siegen.de/~schmidt/
> e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> phone: +49 271 740-2332 fax: +49 271 740-2536
> mobile: +49 173 3789349
> ---------------------------------------------------
> ### Siegen - The Arctic Rain Forest ###
> ===================================================
>
>
>
------------------------------
From: Frank Gerlach <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: _"Good" school in Cryptography ("was" I got accepted)
Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2001 10:42:49 +0200
David Wagner wrote:
> Frank Gerlach wrote:
> >Unfortunately, the best schools are IMHO at the NSAGCHQ spooks.
>
> How so? What criteria are you using, and what evidence do you have?
My criteria is "who invented a novel concept first ?".
Also have a look at differential cryptanalysis. Seems to be invented by
NSA (appearent design criteria for DES sboxes). In the end it boils down
to research funding, and I would argue that the total
NSA/GCHQ/CSIS/DSD math research budget is higher than the combined
research budgets of all *worldwide* public cryptanaylsis.
Still, there are quite a number of good schools; just checking who
invented major algorithms and then correlating this with the current
location of the inventors might provide a clue. On the other hand,
bright people are not necessarily good teachers...
------------------------------
From: Mok-Kong Shen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: I got accepted
Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2001 10:56:40 +0200
Tom St Denis wrote:
>
> Not this again. Bite my hairy butt. Everytime I post something serious I
> get ignored and sometimes people are generous to help in private. Why? Cuz
> this group blows goats. You can't maintain a serious tone without bringing
> in the good ol' spookes.
>
> If this group goes to hell in a hand basket, I want to leave my mark .
I have listed some time back the reasons why sometimes
serious posts fail to get follow-ups: (1) The matter is
o.k. (2) Nobody has yet the time/resources to comment.
(3) The stuff is at too high a level or very complicated
so that either nobody has the knowldege to comment or it
would take a knowledgeable person to much time/effort to
comment (4) The stuff is at too low level so that people
don't care to comment (5) The formulation is extremely
poor for proper understanding and people don't like to
take the trouble to point out the many points of ambiguity
to request the author to improve his article. And (this
is new) (6) The article has the air of being not serious.
One should note the names of the groups when one joins
them. This is a sci group and there are commonly
accepted desirable manners of discussion established
elsewhere through the course of time that apply,
e.g. in academic circles, journals (whether at high
or popular levels). One has in my opinion to respect
these. I don't think that I'll be counted a very
conservative person simply because I think this way.
The fact is that, as evidenced by the recent burst of
spams in the group (there were in consequence posts
about filters; I don't know whether the spams continue
currently because I have employed a filter), we already
have a certain 'level' of 'non-seriousness' that presents
to a visiter who looks into the group. If such a visiter
gets the false opinion that the majority of us are not
serious in persuing science (whether we individually
are capable/competent to do that is not relevant here)
but only regard the group more or less as a chatroom
(in fact one person expressed that he did), then the
possibility of his at once leaving it, if he does
want to dicusss scientific stuffs, would be higher
than otherwise will be the case, isn't it? The
atmosphere of the group is a 'collective' matter. That
is, the effort of everyone in maintaining it at a
desirable/comfortable level counts. This group being
not monitored, we have no means to stop spams excepting
use of filters. But if we ourselves don't do something
on our part (in that we keep to seriousness, disregarding
those disturbances from spams) so to say to
counterpoising or over-weighting such negative stuffs,
then the visage of our group would deteriorate with the
undesirable consequence that we wouldn't be able to
attract certain number of knowledgeable (normally more
serious) people, with whom we could have the pleasure of
discussion and from which we eventually could profit
through learning something from them, isn't it? There
is also the danger of good people leaving the group,
if the the atmosphere gets lower than a certain level.
I wouldn't continue to elaborate my thoughts on this
topic but like to ask you to reflect on the question
why the people going to the big theatres and concert
halls (mostly playing classical stuffs) are on the
average carrying fine looking clothes and never (or
extremely seldom) does one see some visitors who dress
in entirely 'legere' fashion or have the appearance of
drunkards? (I have never been in your country, but I am
quite sure that the society in Canada does not differ
too much from that of Europe.)
M. K. Shen
=========================
http://home.t-online.de/home/mok-kong.shen
------------------------------
From: Mok-Kong Shen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: How good is steganography in the real world?
Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2001 11:19:12 +0200
"Douglas A. Gwyn" wrote:
>
> Mok-Kong Shen wrote:
> > I think it may be noted that 'spams' is a relative notion.
>
> Our reference point is the charter of the newsgroup.
Right.
> > ... If the rate of the hidden bits is low enough, then the
> > method I suggested in 'Steganography with ASCII text files'
> > in sci.crypt, 11th Feb, could be advantageously applied.
>
> But if the "carrier" is posted only for the purpose of
> carrying a steganographic signal, then the posting is
> truly "noise" for the vast majority of newsgroup readers.
You misunderstood me, I suppose. What I meant is it is
'possible' to 'egoistically' exploit the freedom of posting
arbitrary stuffs in some types of groups to achieve the
purpose of transmitting private messages through stego.
That incurs disadvantages to the other readers, of course.
So it is morally bad in doing so. If you want to keep to
good morals/ethics, then you shouldn't do that. BTW, I
recall in this connection the famous sentence that
gentlemen don't read other's correspondences (I hope I
got it right in wordings). (What nice a world we would
be living in, if nobody needs to care to use crypto/stego!)
On the other hand, it is possible in principle, though
needing much more efforts in general, to do steganography
with the method I described while conducting fairly normal
discussions in serious news groups without causing any
disadvantages to the other readers.
M. K. Shen
=========================
http://home.t-online.de/home/mok-kong.shen
------------------------------
From: Frank Gerlach <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: NSA-Endorsed Schools have a Mediocre Internet Presence
Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2001 11:48:08 +0200
To clarify my previous statement that the UKUSA spooks are the best in
cryptography, I would like to add that Internet Presence of the
"National INFOSEC Education & Training Program" schools is definitely
sub-standard.
If their academic standards are the same as their web presence I would
*not* advise to enrool on those schools. Maybe their "internal view" is
totally different, but it seems to me that they are just ranting about
SunTzu, psycho warfare and reactive crap (Intrusion detection and so
on).
*Hard Research* in things like
-Sandbox concepts (e.g. Java sandbox, NSA SE Linux)
-Formal Verification
-Leding-Edge Cryptanalysis
-Steganography
seems to take place somewhere else.
The NSAGCHQ school I was referring to are quite probably top-secret
courses for math graduates, who are spook scientists themselves. It is
obvious to me that any college/university funded by the spooks will
quickly loose their good academics, because they want to publicize
*outside* the spook's circles.
So if one does not want to become a spook, stay away from the
spook-funded universities - they are mediocre by design.
------------------------------
From: "Brian Gladman" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Endianness of MARS
Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2001 11:40:09 +0100
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:UPfB6.137065$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> Hi all,
>
> I'm trying to implement the MARS algoritm. Currently I'm trying to verify
that my expansion key
> function really works. I have a test vector from IBM that goes like this:
>
> KEYSIZE=128
>
> PT=00000000000000000000000000000000
>
> I=1
> KEY=80000000000000000000000000000000
> Expanded Key = [
> 7a690123 4a4cf6ee d1c145fd 4a929170 551a7316 d46b4d1f 6a68b2dd 52a45b5f
> d99775e0 fbec331b 9879762b dbdb6103 b66dfcd5 560475c7 897923f4 cb157a67
> be38b5d6 f5e2a20b db46b244 258e03fb 4e45dcc8 38a3bf7b b600f7b9 ce23f06b
> b255f1c4 66fe13cb 3fa7323b e5168ed7 3c1ca161 ac63d7fb 50826e87 87b0e657
> 77f7012a c1e7aa83 79d936fc 56174f97 9f8f4547 c3901cc5 f32a2b2e c604c22b
> ]
> CT=B3E2AD5608AC1B6733A7CB4FDF8F9952
>
> If you know the MARS algorithm, you would know that the key is stored and
accesed like
> an array in the pseudocode. Thats, we have from k[0] to k[X], 4 <= x <= 14
>
> My question is: How would key 80000000000000000000000000000000
> lool like?
>
> A) OPTION 1
> k[0] = 0x80000000
> k[1] = 0x0
> k[2] = 0x0
> k[3] = 0x0
>
> B) OPTION 2
> k[0] = 0x0
> k[1] = 0x0
> k[2] = 0x0
> k[3] = 0x8
>
> Any ideas?
MARS and Rijndael are essentially byte oriented ciphers that do not exhibit
endian properties in a direct way. It is hence possible to implement MARS
using either big or little endian composition of bytes into 32-bit words.
However both ciphers exhibit some indirect endian features because the
generation of their key schedules involve operations on 32-bit words.
The key "80000000000000000000000000000000" in the MARS test vector set
should be interpreted only as an array of 8-bit bytes where each pair of
hexadecimal digits in the sequence gives the value of one byte (in
conventional hexadecimal form) and the array index for bytes increases from
left to right starting from zero. Hence the first byte in the array -
byte[0] - has a value of 0x80 and byte[1] .. byte[15] are all zero. This is
true on both big and little endian machines since we are dealing with arrays
of bytes that have no byte to byte semantics other than the order imposed by
the array index.
If we adopt a consistent numbering scheme for 4-bit groups (nibbles) - i.e.
with indexes increasing from left to right - we can see that nibble[0],
nibble[2], ... are placed in the most significant nibbles within bytes,
which correseponds to big endian notation. Hence there is a small bias
towards big-endian notation in these sequences. This is also true in the
AES FIPS where bit number 8n+i in an input or output bit sequence is mapped
to bit 7-i of byte n rather than to bit i. An alternative way of thinking
about this is just to number bits within bytes starting from zero at the top
rather than the bottom.
However, in the generation of the key schedule for MARS (and in Rijndael)
some operations manipulate 32-bit words. In consequence it is necessary to
ensure that these words are composed from bytes in the correct endian order
or, alternatively, that the correct word operations are used.
Hence considering, for example, the 'up-rotate' operation - moving bytes
within 4 byte groups to higher array index positions with wraparound - we
can either:
(1) always put bytes into 32-bit words in little-endian order and use left
rotate as the 'up-rotate' operation;
(2) always put bytes into 32-bit words in big-endian order and use right
rotate as the 'up-rotate' operation
(3) leave byte order alone and use left rotate on little-endian machines and
right rotate on big-endian machines.
Option (3) avoids the processing cost of byte order changes and is the
option that I have used in my Rijndael code.
If I recall correctly, MARS defines these operations in terms of words
composed from bytes in little endian order (hence the expanded key above is
given in this form). However, this does not mean that it has to be
implemented in this way.
Brian Gladman
------------------------------
From: "Ben Burge" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Graphical representation of a public key (or fingerprint)?
Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2001 05:55:00 -0500
I take it you mean a graphical representation of the algorithm with the key?
I have done some work on using image files, bmp, to encode data based on the
cotent of the image therefore acting as a password in sorts...
--
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://ecaravan.250x.com
-I think therfore I am (Ergo Congito Sum)
-- Descartes
"dexMilano" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:9b6dut$7td31$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> I made a simple try a couple of months ago.
> On Palm there is a tool that let you compare signatures (Sign on).
> Why not use signature's data to crypt information?
> The problem is that signateures are not equal and also comparison ha some
> interval (does it make sense?)
> As you know the key should be exaclty the same to crypt and decrypt.
>
> The try so was not succesful.
>
> dex
>
> "Michael Schmidt" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ha scritto nel
> messaggio news:9b6cu7$7scub$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> > Hi,
> >
> > I know that there has been research on the topic "graphical passwords",
> i.e.
> > keys being created from graphical user input.
> >
> > I'm wondering whether there has been any research conducted on the topic
> > "graphical representation of a public key" or the key's fingerprint. My
> goal
> > is to authenticate a public key (or better: its fingerprint, like with
> PGP)
> > securely by creating and comparing its graphical representation with an
> > "original", which is unique enough for every key/fingerprint, yet easy
to
> be
> > processed and compared by the human brain.
> >
> >
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> > Michael
> >
> >
> > --
> > ===================================================
> > Michael Schmidt
> > ---------------------------------------------------
> > Institute for Data Communications Systems
> > University of Siegen, Germany
> > www.nue.et-inf.uni-siegen.de
> > ---------------------------------------------------
> > http: www.nue.et-inf.uni-siegen.de/~schmidt/
> > e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> > phone: +49 271 740-2332 fax: +49 271 740-2536
> > mobile: +49 173 3789349
> > ---------------------------------------------------
> > ### Siegen - The Arctic Rain Forest ###
> > ===================================================
> >
> >
> >
>
>
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