RE: debunking snake oil
On 31 August 2007 02:44, travis+ml-cryptography wrote: I think it might be fun to start up a collection of snake oil cryptographic methods and cryptanalytic attacks against them. I was going to post about crypto done wrong after reading this item[*]: http://www.f-secure.com/weblog/archives/archive-082007.html#1263 I can't tell exactly what, but they have to be doing *something* wrong if they think it's necessary to use file-hiding hooks to conceal... well, anything really. The hash of the fingerprint should be the symmetric key used to encrypt either files and folders directly on the thumbdrive, or perhaps a keyring file containing ADKs of some description, but if you do crypto right, you shouldn't have to conceal or obfuscate anything at all. cheers, DaveK [*] - See also http://www.f-secure.com/weblog/archives/archive-082007.html#1264 http://www.f-secure.com/weblog/archives/archive-082007.html#1266 -- Can't think of a witty .sigline today - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: World's most powerful supercomputer goes online
I feel I should add a followup to the earlier post, this was implied by the rhetorical question about what the LINPACK performance of a botnet is, but I'll make it explicit here: The standard benchmark for supercomputers is the LINPACK linear-algebra mathematical benchmark. Now in practice the LINPACK performance of a botnet is likely to be nowhere near that of a specially-designed supercomputer, since it's more a distributed grid than a monolithic system. On the other hand bot- herders are unlikely to care much about the linear algebra performance of their botnet since it doesn't represent the workload of any of the tasks that such a system would be used for. Where Storm leaves every conventional supercomputer in the dust is in terms of the sheer hardware resources (number of CPUs, amount of memory, and network bandwidth) at its disposal. Peter. - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: debunking snake oil
I'd like to start with the really simple stuff; classical cryptography, systems with clean and obvious breaks. You can start with RSA SecurID, Texas Instruments DST40, Microchip Technologies KeeLoq, Philips/NXP Hitag2, WEP RC4, Bluetooth E0, GSM A5... It's much harder to find a product or technology that implements proper ciphers, proper hashes, proper RNGs or proper protocols. And I don't mean small mistakes like in SSH1 or SSL. I mean look at all those proprietary weak ciphers sold for millions! Will they ever learn? Ruptor http://defectoscopy.com/ - There is no need to design weak ciphers. - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Neal Koblitz critiques modern cryptography.
A critique of modern cryptography by Neal Koblitz in Notices of the AMS: http://www.ams.org/notices/200708/tx070800972p.pdf -- Perry E. Metzger[EMAIL PROTECTED] - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: debunking snake oil
Crossroads is an undergraduate journal. We'd do well to single out more worth targets for public ridicule than CS undergrads. If you want to help the author, why not educate, rather than mocking? He's obviously been motivated to think about the subject matter and to even take the bold step up publishing something. If you must scold, aim at the advisor, then. But I don't see much to be gained by scolding in this case. Pick someone who's asking for it - the vendors of all the products that don't do what their buyers hope and wish they would do... On Aug 31, 2007, at 11:35 PM, Ben Pfaff wrote: [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: So, when you find a particularly obnoxious dilettante going on about his bone-headed unbreakable scheme, please forward it to me and I'll see about breaking it, and then publish the schemes and the results on a web site for publicly educating them. Honestly, there's probably no better way to educate people than to see schemes submitted and broken, and I'm not sure there's a good site for it, although there are plenty of books. Unfortunately, these types won't be bothered to buy books since they already know everything. Here's a particularly moronic scheme: http://www.acm.org/crossroads/xrds11-3/xorencrypt.html -- If a person keeps faithfully busy each hour of the working day, he can count on waking up some morning to find himself one of the competent ones of his generation. --William James - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to [EMAIL PROTECTED] - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: debunking snake oil
I don't think fingerprint scanners work in a way that's obviously amenable to hashing with well-known algorithms. Fingerprint scanners produce an image, from which some features can be identified. But, not all the same features can be extracted identically every time an image is obtained. I know there's been research into fuzzy hashing schemes, but are they sufficiently secure, fast, and easy to code that they would be workable for this? --nash On 8/31/07, Dave Korn [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 31 August 2007 02:44, travis+ml-cryptography wrote: I think it might be fun to start up a collection of snake oil cryptographic methods and cryptanalytic attacks against them. I was going to post about crypto done wrong after reading this item[*]: http://www.f-secure.com/weblog/archives/archive-082007.html#1263 I can't tell exactly what, but they have to be doing *something* wrong if they think it's necessary to use file-hiding hooks to conceal... well, anything really. The hash of the fingerprint should be the symmetric key used to encrypt either files and folders directly on the thumbdrive, or perhaps a keyring file containing ADKs of some description, but if you do crypto right, you shouldn't have to conceal or obfuscate anything at all. cheers, DaveK [*] - See also http://www.f-secure.com/weblog/archives/archive-082007.html#1264 http://www.f-secure.com/weblog/archives/archive-082007.html#1266 -- Can't think of a witty .sigline today - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to [EMAIL PROTECTED] - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: debunking snake oil
On 02 September 2007 01:13, Nash Foster wrote: I don't think fingerprint scanners work in a way that's obviously amenable to hashing with well-known algorithms. Fingerprint scanners produce an image, from which some features can be identified. But, not all the same features can be extracted identically every time an image is obtained. I know there's been research into fuzzy hashing schemes, but are they sufficiently secure, fast, and easy to code that they would be workable for this? Well, if fingerprint scanners aren't reliable enough to identify the same person accurately twice, it's even moreso snake oil to suggest they're suitable for crypto... or even biometric authentication, for that. (I wonder if the level of variability is manageable enough that you could generate a set of the most-probable variations of the trace of a given fingerprint and then use a multiple key/N-out-of-M technique.) cheers, DaveK -- Can't think of a witty .sigline today - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
