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AES Announced as Federal Standard
chekhov writes: "Today NIST has finally announced AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) as a Federal Standard after 4 years of development. See the press release. AES is the replacement of DES and is expected to be used in financial systems and secure networks for up to 20 years. More information on the AES homepage."
dgf
*BSD is dying
Yet another crippling bombshell hit the beleaguered *BSD community when last month IDC confirmed that *BSD accounts for less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of the latest Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as further exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood. FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to another charnel house.
All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS hobbyist dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.
*BSD is dying
Backdoor?
Fp
...but you are an total AES!
HAHA, getting slow in your old age.
Quantum beowulf decryption boxes, what then? Seriously though, how future proof can you really get these days? We are in the elbow of the technology curve, its all up from here.
In 20 years when the encryption is broken, will we then find out what "Rijndael" really means?
Weeks of coding saves hours of planning.
"The specifications for the Rijndael algorithm have now been formally incorporated into Federal Information Processing Standard 197." I don't think that such an algorithm can be secure and have backdoors.
"also is completing arrangements so that vendors can have their implementations of AES validated under the Cryptographic Module Validation Program, jointly led by NIST and the Government of Canada's Communications Security Establishment" Cryptographic Module Validation Program is going to put that Backdoors?
Not if it's your implementation and your company name.(Or is going to pay a lot of money) "They have agreed that their algorithm may be used without royalty fees.
So can be done under the GNU/GPL.
-= If you fight Dragons long enough, you will become a Dragon =-
The article assures us that even though DES can now be (relatively easily) broken, AES would take umpteen quadrillion years to break (plus or minus).
I can't help thinking that back when DES was new, they probably told us the same thing.
Moore's law and all that stuff, but betcha in a decade or so AES is suddenly breakable...!!!!
Who will be required to implement and use the AES?
The AES is now an approved encryption algorithm that can be used by U.S. government organizations to protect sensitive, unclassified information.
...
Commercial and other non-federal organizations are invited-but not required-to adopt and implement the AES and NIST's other cryptographic standards.
If I read this correctly, terrorist cells qualify as "other organizations". I couldn't find any mention of export limitations, civilian key strength limitations, or bans on use by criminal organizations.
What have we done?
If guns kill people, then CmdrTaco's keyboard misspells words.
I think that its interesting that the US goverment had the guts to thoose a european developed algorithm. Usually those thing goes to US based companies/scientists.
Heads up for choosing the best solution from a cryptography viewpoint!
AES is Rijndael (ie the name of the cipher selected selected as AES is "Rijndael").
;-) here and here
Find out all about it (including how to say it
Tales from behind the Lagom Curtain
For years now, the common American penis bird has been a staple of every American's daily diet. Whether it be penis bird sandwiches, fried penis bird, or perhaps penis bird under glass (for the rich), we all have penis bird at least once a day. Many Americans have no clue how the penis bird became so important in the pyramid of a balanced diet, so in this article I will attempt to explain its history and why it is so useful.
In the early 1870s, Francis Zefran became the first penis bird breeder in North America. He started his famous Penis Bird Ranch in Canton, OH. At the time, not much was known of the penis bird's nutritional value, but the Penis Bird Ranch changed all of that. Not only did Francis Zefran raise penis birds to sell their colorful plumes (a VERY lucrative business), he also set up the world's first research lab dedicated solely to the study of the penis bird.
The lab found many interesting things. First, it was discovered that the penis bird was actually semi-sentient. Second, the scientists found that the meat of the penis bird was high in protein, vitamin A, vitamin B, and calcium, while low in fat, cholestorol, and sodium. Never before had such a nutritious meal been had without supplement or fortification. The scientists of the lab recommended immediately that the penis bird become a part of every American's daily diet.
When the news of the penis bird's usefulness reached president Rutherford B. Hayes, he was absolutely ecstatic. You see, President Hayes owed a number of favors to Francis Zefran because as I said earlier, the penis bird plume trade was an extremely lucrative business and Mr. Zefran was important in getting RBH elected through a number of monetary gifts. President Hayes immediately asked Congress to pass what we all know today as the Hayes/Zefran Penis Bird Consumption Act.
The act did a number of things to make the penis bird a daily meal, most important of which was the requirement that for every four people in a household, one penis bird must consumed every day. Another thing the act did was create an artificial monopoly for Francis Zefran's Penis Bird Industries. The act stated that the only supplier of penis bird meat in the US would be PBI. As one would imagine, this quickly made Francis Zefran into the richest man in the world. He was soon a multi-billionaire (quadrillionaire with today's inflation). Never before had a single man seen such wealth.
Many challenges were made to the Hayes/Zefran Penis Bird Consumption Act, and several even made it the Supreme Court. It was argued that the act was unconstitutional and went against liberty itself, but once the detractors tasted delicious penis bird meat for the first time, they immediately dropped their cases and followed the law to the letter. We all know today that penis bird is the most delicious meat man has ever known, but at that time, the only meats people ate were pork and beef.
In the early 1970s, though, challenges to the act began again. Many argued that the monopoly given to Penis Bird Industries by the act was in all ways unamerican. The Supreme Court finally agreed, and in 1974, Section II of the act was struck down. This in effect opened the market to competition for all.
Today, Penis Bird Industries is almost no more. Today we have the market leader Penis Bird Meat International facing against Penissoft, a recent startup. Where will the future lead the penis bird market? Only time will tell us, but one thing is certain: penis birds are here to stay!
< )
( \
X
8====D
-klerck
It seems to be open, and acceptable to alot of people. More information on the cipher is to be found here.
There a big ambiguity that I couldn't really sort out while reading these web pages: Is this an Open standard or a Commercial standard ?
Will I have to pay royalties if I intend to write AES-compliant programs then sell related services?
I actually read in the facts page that the "public" helped building the algorithm and specs but in which way is that AES thing public?
Trolling using another account since 2005.
Interesting that the US government was busy asking people to try to crack an encryption standard, while at the same time upholding a law to make breaking encryption illegal.
So, now that this encryption method is officially accepted, will it be illegal to try to crack it?
look at this page in the AES author's site : http://www.esat.kuleuven.ac.be/~rijmen/windows.htm l
When will I end this grieving ? When will my future begin ?
One of the perks of cryptography seems to be the chance to make up words for big numbers! 1 undecillion = 10^36
10^3 = Thousand
10^6 = Million
10^9 = Billion
10^12 = Trillion
10^15 = Zillion(?)
...
I seem to remeber Douglas Adams invented a 'grillion' but don't know how big that was supposed to be
personally I am a fan of serpant Ross Anderson work because I understand it and after some conversations with people who know both I think its better than AES
the sooner AES is used widely the better though
regards
john 'keys ? no sir I forget things' jones
Governement approved? does it means that there is some sort of "anti-terrorist" backdoor to be used by the FBI?
I can't see any info about AES being adopted in the PGP framework. Anyone knows how this work is progressing? (or has even started..)
Excellent answer, thank you very much.
Pity, Slashdot has not given me the possibility to send you this notice in private (* hint ! * hint !* ), hence such "noise" which I apologize for.
Now, if I happen to successfully develop an AES "decryptor", may I publish its source code without infringing the DMCA?
Trolling using another account since 2005.
I found several notes on the openssl users list which seem to indicate that AES/Rijndael support will be available in OpenSSL 0.9.7. This has not been released yet, but is reportedly available in the CVS area.
05 December 2001 : Names of Two US Soldiers Killed in Martyrdom Operation
AZZAM PUBLICATIONS WOULD LIKE TO REQUEST ALL THOSE WHO ARE DISTRIBUTING OUR NEWS TO MENTION AZZAM.COM AS THE SOURCE OF THE NEWS. WE WOULD ALSO LIKE TO ENCOURAGE YOU TO PRINT OUT THIS NEWS AND PASTE IT IN YOUR MOSQUES, NOTICEBOARDS, ETC. AND TO SEND IT ROUND ON YOUR E-MAIL LISTS, DISCUSSION BOARDS AND WEB-SITES. PLEASE MENTION AZZAM.COM AS THE NEWS SOURCE WHEN DOING SO.
AFGHANISTAN: The following information has been provided by Mujahid Sheikh Abu Khalid Abdullah Al-Waleed as a challenge for the Pentagon to refute it. He said that the Mujahideen possess all the necessary proof and evidence for the information given here, which will be publicised if Allah makes it possible. It is one of the series of authentic news reports from Afghanistan that have been related over the Internet to heal the hearts of the Muslims and boost their morale.
On Monday 26 November 2001 (10 Ramadan 1422), Sheikh Abu Khalid Abdullah Al- Waleed conducted an interview with the husband of the martyred sister, after the Isha Prayer. There was a convoy that was getting ready to depart areas surrounding Kunduz, so the brother of the martyred sister suggested that they wait until the Americans arrived. The brother and sister had in their possessions passports whose names suggested that they were Jews of British nationality. They planned to inform the enemy troops that were not Mujahideen, in order to save themselves from being killed or captured. When they initially arrived in Mazar-i-Sharif, they were able to successfully protect themselves by using this cover story. However, they were advised not to leave without weapons with which they could defend themselves if the situation demanded it. However, the husband suggested to his brother-in-law that instead of carrying weapons, he should give some explosives to his wife which she can detonate if they are captured, thus killing the enemy soldiers along with them. Thus they did as they had planned and the sister strapped a belt of explosives around her waist.
The brother and sister thus went to the positions of the Shiite Hizbi-Wahdah faction and General Dostum's forces. Since they were on foot, the enemy fired upon them and they then jumped to the floor and did not return fire. When the enemy saw that they were not acting in a hostile manner, one enemy soldier approached them and they addressed him in English. The soldier thus shouted out to those behind him: "Hold your fire, these are Americans." They then picked up the brother and sister and took them in their jeep into Mazar- i-Sharif where they found an American soldier. The American soldier asked them what they were doing in an area between Kunduz and Mazar-i-Sharif where they had captured many prisoners. The brother replied that they were aid workers for Oxfam. He praised Allah when the American soldier believed them, not knowing that Oxfam had ceased operations in Afghanistan a long time ago! However, he informed them that he would have to verify their credentials by taking them to his headquarters in Kabul, where hopefully everything could be quickly sorted out. He thus arranged a special car with guards to take them to Kabul.
As the brother managed to get a few quiet moments with his sister, he rehearsed the plan with her. He told her that there were no chance that they could return to either the Mujahideen or the Taliban positions; and nor could they wait until they arrived at Kabul since they would be exposed there. They sat in a truck filled with Russians and accompanied by four armed Shiite Hizbi-Wahdah fighters. In the cabin were two Americans. The brother brought his face closer to the noble face of his sister and she whispered to him, "I am ready. He then told her to repeat "La ilaha illallah..." behind him, which she did in a faint whisper, faint in volume but high in certainty and Iman. He then told her to say, "There is no god but Allah and Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah. Upon this we live, upon this we die, upon this we wage Jihad and upon it we hope to be raised up." She repeated this and then put her hand on the detonator button and pressed it.
A roaring tremor shook the truck, which was travelling at 25mph, and it overturned. The brother of the martyred sister managed to jump out of the truck as it left the road, having been injured by the explosion. From his other eye, however, he caught sight of a bright, concentrated, beam of light shining from the truck into the sky whilst the truck was otherwise in flames, in a ditch by the side of the road. Whilst part of the truck was burning, the brother made his way to the cabin to confirm that the two Crusaders did not survive. He saw that the two had perished due to the accident (not the fire) and the bodies of the Shiite fighters were strewn across the road far from the truck. As for the martyred sister, he saw her noble, pure body largely in tact despite the explosion, and he was satisfied that perhaps that beam of light he saw earlier must have taken care of her body.
As it was very late into the night, no-one came on the road. Four hours later, the brother prayed the Fajr Prayer, then he prayed for his martyred sister, the Mujahideen and finally, himself. By that time, the flames around the cabin had died down and the brother returned to it and saw the bodies of the two Americans, covered in blood. He took their sidearms: a 9mm Beretta pistol from one and a German pistol from the other. He then searched their pockets and found their personal identification cards, which read:
NAME: Ronald Stephen Leigh
CITY: Houston, Texas
NAME: Michael Simon Watkins
CITY: Los Angeles, California
Abu Khalid urged the Pentagon to refute these claims and stop hiding information from the American public and the families of the above two Americans regarding US casualties in this war so far. He repeated that the Mujahideen possess the proof of their identification, which will be distributed if Allah makes it easy.
"Jihad will continue against America at all costs, whether Kandahar remains in our hands or not." Taliban Commander Dadullah
KANDAHAR (Daily Islam): The great Taliban commander, Mulla Dadullah said that America should know that this is just the beginning of the war, a war which might last forever and will prove to be the worst nightmare for the Americans, even worse than the former war with the Russians. This war will rid the victims of the whole world from the cruelty and vice of America. In an interview to the 'Daily Islam', he said that the temporary retreats, arrests, wounds, injuries and martyrdoms are all a part of Jihad and that they and all fellow Mujahideen will never let the Muslim Ummah down. He further said that they all are UNITED under the strong leadership of Amee-rul- Mumineen, Mulla Muhammad Umar and that they will not rest in peace until the biggest enemy of Islam (America) is utterly crushed to its end.
Dead Bodies of 30 Gul Agha's Soldiers Reach Baluchistan
KANDAHAR (Islam News): The dead bodies of 30 of Gul Agha's soldiers have reached Baluchistan. They were killed during the first attempt to reach Kandahar, by the enemy. Gul Aga has been smuggling drug barons and gangsters from Baluchistan to Afghanistan to fight against the Mujahideen.
COMING THURSDAY...EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH TALIBAN COMMANDER MULLAH DADULLAH, COMMANDER OF TALIBAN AND MUJAHIDEEN IN FORCES IN KUNDUZ...EXCLUSIVELY ON AZZAM.COM
The AES has selected the variable key lengths of 128, 192, 256 to be used with a 128 bit block
BouncyCastle has had a full implementation of Rijndael since 1.0 beta 4 (now at 1.10)
Disclaimer: I'm a BouncyCastle author.
I have $20.00 that says that some wiseguy will crack AES by this time in 2002. Any takers?
******
"I do not play at being God -- I AM GOD!
Points for whoever can produce the explanation why the apparent weakness doesn't matter, and why we shouldn't be jimmying our Rijndaels to do a few more rounds, and calling the variant "RWS" (for Rijndael With Suspenders) or something.
Remember that it was the suspenders added to MD4 to make MD5 that made the cracking of MD4 something other than a disaster.
A googleplex is 10^google and was in the Guiness book of records for being the highest named number. Don't know if thats changed now, I've only got the 1992 book :-(
my favorite part:
He might be able to create a pretty neat encryption algorithm, but he sure as hell can't do browser detection very well ;)
...developing it, when you can ROT-13 anything and slap anyone who decodes with a copy of the DMCA? :P
Flaming liberals always want the backdoor.
Bah, try 20 months. :P
But of course you'll be able to do that easily once IBM releases it's first quantum computer....
You mean the Men In Black will be able to do that.
Since by definition, a quantum computer can produce an absolutely unbreakable (no shit!) cypertext, and at the same time be able to crack any current cryptosystem (Read Simon Singhs "The code book" for a simple explination of how and why). I don't think us mortals will be alowed near one for many years to come.
Intersetingly, I know people who are working on 'spintronics' (a way of using electron spin up/down to convay info over a laser signal). They are being steered away from doing to much work into the quantum cryptography aspect of this.
I wonder why?
Anyone quoted by a reporter knows how little they understand
Don't believe what you read is the truth.
Oh my word, K-maps really kick my ass all over the place!
Aye aye aye aye, I am the Frito bandito.
Go here: Names for Large Numbers.
You will find that "undecillion" is not in fact made up, nor are likely most of the terms you've seen used by cryptographers. "Zillion" however is a nonsense word. 10^15 is a quadrillion (in the American system). According to the above page it might be a thousand billion or billiard in continental Europe, or a million billion in Britain (especially by the Times of London--more likely they would avoid a specific term).
The most noted (and specific, unlike "zillion") made up terms are gogol and gogolplex.
Now, if I happen to successfully develop an AES "decryptor", may I publish its source code without infringing the DMCA [tompox.com] ?
The inventors of Rijndael, who seem to be exceptionally intelligent and sane people, would probably be more than happy to be challenged with a real attack on the algorithm. Unless you have a PHD in Mathematics specializing cryptoanalysis you probably needn't waste your breath though.
Of course, if the media industry has had time to implement AES in one of their ridiculous UHT (User Hostile Tech) schemes, you may well end up under legal attack, as could, very possibly, the authors of the algorithm themselves should they find a flaw. It has been noted that the media industries will probably not go after "academics" in the short term considering how the Felten affair blew up on them (Russian's apparently don't count).
Just because the enemy has usurped the term "secure" for their UHT does not mean that you should confuse all encryption with DMCA etc. These algorithms really are secure, based on real math that most people agree not even the NSA can break, and do not rely on stupid "gun in mouth" schemes to keep people from breaking them as UHT invariably does.
grillion == 10^42?
-ck
One point twenty one (j)igawatts of power! One point twenty one (j)igawatts of power!! Great Scott!!!
Double rot-13. I hear that's even more secure than rot-26!
Best Slashdot Co
(insert same *hint* as above here ;-)
OK, so you mean that if I happen to break it as an algorithm, this is okay, but if I happen to break its implementation as the new killerdvd format, then I may end up in a similar cell as Dmitri Sklyarov's?
So this once again makes me wonder whether there is or not a bug in the DMCA:
If some technologies are based upon some free algorithm which get broken, (*breathe here*) why should the happy-genious-hacker be sued as he just pointed out some flaw in a "public" technology?
Actually, as he'll make the technology improve and thus get rid of the given flaw, it'd rather be the fault of the suing organization as they accepted to use a flawed1 algorithm...
I guess the DMCA seriously sucks because of its lack of consistance:
They should rather not use any protection at all than inventing some stupid placebo and whining it's been broken into by some clever hacker.
1: though this argumentation is purely 100% hypothetical, I assume there are flaws until one mathematically demonstrates there aren't...
Trolling using another account since 2005.
I tought that the number of possible states in a quantum computer is something around 2 to the power of X, where X is the number of qbits.
Does the computing power not increase in a similar way?
If it does, then to brute force a bigger key one just has to use more qbits!!!
Can anyone who really knows about this confirm or deny it????
Now, if I happen to successfully develop an AES "decryptor", may I publish its source code without infringing the DMCA?
If you happen to successfully develop an AES decryptor, you should just emigrate to Sweden when they hand you your Nobel prize.
The AES is now an approved encryption algorithm that can be used by U.S. government organizations to protect sensitive,
Emphasis mine. So what is approved for sensitive classified information? Anybody know?
Of course, if the media industry has had time to implement AES in one of their ridiculous UHT (User Hostile Tech) schemes, any inteligent and lazy cracker would try to break the implementation, and not the algorithm.
that's *classified*.
;)
I think that its interesting that the US goverment had the guts to thoose a european developed algorithm.
Do you also think it interesting that the US chose to use the internal combustion engine (a European development) in its automobiles!
there is no Nobel for mathematics, and I don't think you can decrypt with medicine or litterature;)
Security wasn't the only consideration in choosing an algorithm for AES. Another major factor was how efficient the candidate was. The winner had to be not only secure, but also fast on very low-end devices and able to scale up to very powerful machines. You can expect to see AES used on emmbedded microcontrollers, smart cards, and appliances (music players, phones, etc.) and also on hulking encryption "mainframes" dedicated to doing huge amounts of cryptographic operations very, very fast.
I'd guess that Rijndael was more efficient on more types of devices than serpent and that led to its being accepted as the standard.
IMO, that doesn't take anything away from the other top five candidates in terms of their usefullness at hiding information.
obviously no deficiencies vs. no obvious deficiencies
Lets see if RSA labs will start another contest like DES III with a 10 grand prize. Heh, I say a year from now, we'll have new d.net clients :)
pUt th3 cr4cKp1p3 d0wN!
"Electric Relaxation" - ATCQ
- Bwana
Well....
obviously....
that's classified.
I read Cryptonomicon also :) I'm re-reading it now so this is pretty fresh in my mind. As I understand it, the Germans did rely too heavily on Enigma; however, they changed their boxes every night at midnight to a new key structure. This would break the previous day's decryption (on the British side) and sometimes they'd crack the new codes in a few hours, sometimes not at all.
In regards to 'Enigma 2', it was virtually unbreakable for months. Adding a 4th wheel to a 3 wheel encryption box was pretty hardcore for the crackers to deal with. Luckily they never fully deployed their grandest scheme which was multitudes more difficult than Enigma.
was also a rather average anime, mostly intended as a promotion for the light gun accessory for the Sega Master System (AKA Megadrive).
Even if that happens, you'd never hear about it. That's the kind of information the government specializes in controlling. Usually, THEY hear it, and then nobody does until it's reproduced so many times in the private sector that they can no longer supress it. Take public-key encryption, for example. The British government claims to have invented it, but at the time, they wouldn't let their crypto people take credit for it. Even after RSA came about, they wouldn't say anything. But now they want credit like a nymphomaniac at a dildo factory.
BouncyCastle.
It amazes me how often open source authors pick self-destructive names. A serious effort should not be limited by a humorous or trick name.
A name like BouncyCastle will limit the number of people who adopt the software. People are afraid there is a hidden joke they don't understand.
There are times when it is appropriate to be 100 percent serious.
I am NOT saying anything negative about the software. The ONLY negative thing I am saying about the authors is that they are obviously not professional communicators.
Open Source Software needs marketing communication like any product that wants to reach a large number of people.
Bush's education improvements were
OK, so you mean that if I happen to break it as an algorithm, this is okay, but if I happen to break its implementation as the new killerdvd format, then I may end up in a similar cell as Dmitri Sklyarov's ?
Yes, pretty much.
So this once again makes me wonder whether there is or not a bug in the DMCA :
If some technologies are based upon some free algorithm which get broken, (*breathe here*) why should the happy-genious-hacker be sued as he just pointed out some flaw in a "public" technology?
Don't try to apply logic to law, it will lead you nowhere. The reason the happy-genious-hacker gets sued is because he is a convenient target, who can easily be painted as a villian in the eyes of courts, politicians, and the public.
Actually, as he'll make the technology improve and thus get rid of the given flaw, it'd rather be the fault of the suing organization as they accepted to use a flawed1 algorithm...
You are missing a vital point that a lot of technologists seem to miss, but that has not been lost on the international media cartels. It is this: there is no non-flawed implementation of UHT.
Because UHT relies on your computer controlling you (what "user hostile" means) and in at least some sense your computer is always actually under your control, regardless of implementation it will always be possible to crack it. Hackers like Sklyarov and Beale Screamer are not helping improve the UHT technology because whatever is done it will always stay vulnerable, and the vulnerablilities they exposed were undoubtably known by the implementors. If you support the existance of UHT (or copyright law, with doubtlessly requires UHT to be enforced) then the DMCA is not only a justified, but a necessary law. In fact, the DMCA does not go nearly far enough, which is why laws like the 'SS'SCA are very necessary as well.
I guess the DMCA seriously sucks because of its lack of consistance :
They should rather not use any protection at all than inventing some stupid placebo and whining it's been broken into by some clever hacker.
The DMCA provides the international media cartels with a weapon to harrass technologists who want to use computers freely as they see fit rather than under the control of the cartels' authority. It may not be too helpful against software hackers, though it has certainly slowed down many projects, but it certainly works for other purposes (consider why you will never see a CD-ROM drive that by default ignores the broken error-correction codes on those new "copy-proof" CDs).
1 : though this argumentation is purely 100% hypothetical, I assume there are flaws until one mathematically demonstrates there aren't...
Unfortunately that puts you in a quite a bad place, as to my knowledge there are no(*) current ciphers that are mathematically proven to be uncrackable. There are a couple of, at least hypothetical, asymmetric ciphers that have been shown to be "NP-complete" meaning, roughly, that if they can be cracked then a whole class of problems nobody has found any answers to yet can be solved as well (you may have heard of the N != NP conjecture), but the common ones (RSA, DSA, ElGamal) are not even that. Newly designed ciphers like Rijndael/AES (which is a symmetric cipher, so should not be confused with those mentioned before) are not proved to be mathematically secure, but simply engineered to be secure against all currently known attack vectors.
(*) In order to avoid the obligatory lamer responding with ("There is a provably secure cipher, it's called One Time Tap"), I digress that there is a provably secure cipher called a one time pad, which uses keys as large as the messages that can only be used once. OTP can only be used as a type of secrecy delay - if you have a secure channel between two parties at one point in time, they can exchange random key data that will allow them to securely communicate the exact same amount of data securely over an insecure channel later. There is also the algorithm that I believe came from a student of Adi Shamir last year which hid the data in a stream of random data so large there would be no way to cache it long enough to crack the cyrpto (in theory anyways).
In 1976 Donald Knuth published a paper titled Coping with Finiteness in which he names a number Super K. It is defined as 10^^^^3 where 10^^10 = 10^10^10^10^10^10^10^10^10^10^10 or 10^10 10 times.
I couldn't find the paper (damnit) but Knuth says in Things a Computer Scientist Rarely Talks About
"If you don't agree that Super K is so large as to be beyond human comprehension, I can at least prove conclusively that if you consider all the numbers less than or equal to Super K, almost all of them are impossible to describe in any way in the univerise"
I dunno, is that bigger than a googleplex? I wouldn't be surprised if the Guinness people spent less than 30 seconds researching this - in fact I suspect this was just some piece of useless trivia someone who happened to be in the office that day happened to know
Oh great. Here's a site that calls itself "I mad".
Poll: Would you use software from a site called "I mad"?
Bush's education improvements were
Thanks, I have absolutely no knowledge of cryptology and you actually managed to teach me a lot without digressing too much from my original rights-related questions.
Now, what about setting up a unique dedicated processor (programmable-FPGA-based) that'd only execute encrypted binary code ?
I believe, at this level, only "trusted" components would be able to use it as part of a trusted network, no?
I mean: The various encryption you mentioned suggested a "passive key" (aka "data").
If the key happened to be either a program (which one could disassemble...) or a chip, then I guess we'd have something quite secure.
Trolling using another account since 2005.
In other news, Attorney General John Ashcroft "detained" all 857 employees of the NIST as "suspected terrorists". They are being held incommunicado at an undisclosed location, awaiting execution by a miliary tribunal. "We can't just have people releasing encryption algorithms whenever they feel like it, even if they are employees of the US Government," said Ashcroft. When it was pointed out to him that bin Laden avoids technical means of communication in favor of face-to-ear whispers among trusted family members, Ashcroft replied: "That's OK. Better to execute 857 innocent geeks than allow one terrorist to slip through."
sPh
What is almost never mentioned in discussions of cryptography is that brute force or most mathematical attacks require that the method of encryption be known.
If the method of encryption is not known, then it can be impossible to decrypt a message. For example, if several kinds of strong encryption are used, and the kinds and order are not known, then brute force or mathematical attacks don't work. (Using several methods of encryption together is called "chaining".)
This is of limited use since, in many cases, it is impossible or impractical or difficult to keep the methods of encryption secret.
Nevertheless, software that used several encryption methods and varied the methods depending on the passphrase would have value in some cases where there is plenty of computing power.
--
Links to respected news sources show how U.S. government policy contributed to terrorism: What should be the Response to Violence?
Bush's education improvements were
The U.S. government has standardized an AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) algorithm after four years of testing. The original encryption formula is developed by two Belgian scientists, Joan Daemen and Vincent Rijmen. Will the new standard pass the test of time? By comparison to the old standard, where government used triple DES with an effective symmetric strength of 112 bits, we are far ahead now. The 256 bit key space allows for over 1 followed by 77 zeros combinations. Several companies are already offering AES crypto toolkits and new products are emerging. For example a toolkit from Cryptix includes the new AES for some time now. Also, CryptoHeaven is already offering a data exchange platform with AES 256 bit security. Watch for more exciting new products as they are doomed to come to the computer near you!
What is so wrong with RSA? From my limited experiences with it, it has proven to be very secure.
While there are two different approaches (the US "billion" is a British "millard"), they both follow the convention of the Latin (or is it Greek?) "combining form" for a number followed by "illion." So 1, 2, 3, 4 -- "mil-, bi-, tri-, quad-" -- becomes "million," "billion," "trillion" and quadrillion.
If we use our familiar SI prefixes:
deca: decillion: 1e30
hecto: hectillion: 1e300
kilo: kilillion: 1e3000
mega: megillion: 1e3000000
giga: gigillion: 1e3000000000
tera: terillion: 1e3000000000000
exa: exillion: 1e3000000000000000
and so forth. (In other words, what comes after exa-?)
And never forget
triskadillion: 1e39
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
Check out http://www.cryptoheaven.com they already have a file sharing system using it.
Oops, all of those exponents should be bumped by three. I'm from an alternate reality where all of this was rationalized years ago..., yeah, that's it!
So a gigillion is 1e3000000003, etc.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
Yep, you're right... but there is the Field's Medal... kind of the same thing...
I think you're confused. RSA claimed, in their Scientific American article at least, that their 100-bit key would take millions of years to break. In fact, advances in factoring algorithms (and to a far less extent, raw computing power) lead to it being broken in less than 20 years. Now the minimal recommended key size is 400 bits longer, amd most of us use keys 900 bits longer.
DES was never expected to have a lifetime longer than 25 years or so. The cryptanalysts who designed DES never heard of Moore's law, and wouldn't have cared about it if they had. They knew that the most important factor was algorithm efficiency, not the raw computing power.
In fact, a study in Programming Pearls a while back compared the effects of improved algorithms vs. improved hardware speed for several historically hard problems. The results were clear - hardware is getting faster, but you could still run circles around the latest supercomputer running 1960s era algorithms with your PDA running current algorithms. (Okay, the original article compared Crays to TRS-80s, but kids today may not know what a trash-80 is.)
The only reason computers seem slower is that they're used to solve far bigger problems. People tend to be willing to spend the same amount of time solving problems, and for a given time O(nlg(n)) has a far larger value of 'n' than O(n^3).
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
- The new standard contains a sophisticated mathematical formula known as an algorithm.
Did anyone else find this to be hilarious? I can see a manager saying something like, "We need to write this at a 6th-grade level of comprehension. Be sure to define the word 'algorithm'."Check out Chad's News
Power for the Future
At least it is not a joke. Back before IBM sold PCs, I was selling Morrow Microdecision PCs, that ran the CP/M operating system. Back then it was unusual that someone would own a computer. 4.77 Megahertz for $2,300. No hard drive, 13 inch monochrome monitor.
I chose that trademark to signify exactly what it says.
Bush's education improvements were
US Government classified information? What the heck are they using for classified info crypto? From the article:
Q: What is the chance that someone could use the "DES Cracker"-like hardware to crack an AES key?
In the late 1990s, specialized "DES Cracker" machines were built that could recover a DES key after a few hours. In other words, by trying possible key values, the hardware could determine which key was used to encrypt a message.
A: Assuming that one could build a machine that could recover a DES key in a second (i.e., try 255 keys per second), then it would take that machine approximately 149 thousand-billion (149 trillion) years to crack a 128-bit AES key. To put that into perspective, the universe is believed to be less than 20 billion years old.
snip...
The Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) will be a new Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) Publication that will specify a cryptographic algorithm for use by U.S. Government organizations to protect sensitive (unclassified) information.
you may have heard of the N != NP conjecture
Ermmm... no, actually, I've never heard of that. I've heard quite a bit about the P != NP conjecture, though. Is this similar?
"It's bread toasted in a frying pan with a light coat of butter. Americans might better know this dish as texas toast, though that term usually implies that you have prepared an unusually large slice of bread in this manner."
OK well I've never heard of 'texas toast' either... (I'm not an american.) Thanks for the description.
I'm an American but I've never heard of "Texas toast," either. I did, however, learn to stay away from any type of food dish whose name involves the word "Texas." Words to live by. Crazy Texans.
Says you, but why the hell should I believe a bloke called FuturePower? You don't have to. He is not the person doing the AES. I think he has a very good point both on the specific and for naming in general.
Help fight continental drift.
> Fried egg.
Or possibly scrambled. Maybe boiled as an option.
> Hash Browns
Not in an English breakfast. Not one without strong American influences anyway.
> Fried bread
and toast.
> Probably some other stuff as well
Fried (or possibly large grilled) mushrooms. Black pudding (blood sausage). (Or possibly white pudding, but that's less common).
rant
since key sizes of most passwords are at most 40 bits.
If the software chose the methods of encryption, and the sequence in which the methods were used, based on the password, then chaining would be secure.
The problem with this is that it does not allow public key encryption. So, some independent way must be found to distribute the password. In many cases, however, there is no difficulty with distributing passwords. For example, if employees of a company often visit the home office, they can receive new passwords.
Bush's education improvements were
i bet they are using one-time pads. it's just like splitting the message in two, completely random parts. if applied several times, you can end up with 10 parts of the same message, that you have to xor together to get the initial message. that is 100% security, as the pad is truly random, and any message with this length could have been the original with equal probability. impossible to solve.
I am wondering if the printed RSA paper that they sent out from that Scientific American article is a collector's item now. I still have my copy and it'd be cool to get a bunch of cash for it on eBay.
Please don't sound superior about this.
If I lived in Iran, I would change my name to Moshen. Why? Because I don't want to sound Christian in a country where that is not favored. (Because Christians killed Muslims during the Crusades.)
I suggested to a friend of mine whose name is Mohammad that he pick another name for use in the U.S., since someone named Mohammad had bombed a TWA flight, and Mohammad Salameh bombed the World Trade Center the first time it was bombed. He strongly agreed, and now calls himself Mike when communicating with people who don't understand his culture.
I had a Japanese-Brazilian acquaintance whose last name is Asso, which is pronounced to rhyme with asshole. When he says his last name, it sounds like he is saying asshole. If he came here, I would recommend he adopt a different name.
I heard about a German man, now living in the U.S., who changed his last name. Before the change, it was Raper, a perfectly good name in German.
Un-intentional communication has killed many Open Source Software projects, and commercial companies, too. I have found that this is a very radical opinion on Slashdot, but it is the standard opinion of professional communicators and marketing people. My opinion is that OSS must adopt good communication methods to avoid silly problems like this.
I'm not saying that someone who is named Imad should change his name. He should arrange his communication, however, so people who are new to knowing him don't read it as "I mad", which is what a native English speaker is likely to do.
--
Links to respected news sources show how U.S. government policy contributed to terrorism: What should be the Response to Violence?
Bush's education improvements were
You just answered the question. If you know it's DES, or even AES, you know something about how to break it, or at least the magnitude. The biggest threat to security is knowing what security steps were taken. The gov may not use anything more sophisticated, but just that it's not well known makes it better.
- Sig this!
Also, the processor time and memory is roughly proportional to key length
In other words, the time to decrypt a message with an n-bit key is O(n). The time to bruteforce a message (decrypt a message with all n-bit keys) is thus O(n*2^n) which is still O(2^n) at high values of n. So you still lose a bit of key length to Moore's law of transistor density every 18 months.
So if you double the capabilities of your computer then you can double the key length without taking a performance hit.
But then you and everybody you communicate with would have to make new keys. And even then, you often can't use more than 128-bit keys across national borders.
Well computers probably got fast enough in the last 80s, but encryption-for-everybody still hasn't really taken off. I guess social factors are harder to model than CPU speeds!
Another problem is that PGP/GnuPG "web of trust" model requires you to know somebody face-to-face who is already part of the web of trust so that you can validate her key and gain access to the rest of the keys. In fact, there must be a path in the graph of PGP users that leads to Phil Zimmermann or to Richard M. Stallman (see also Oracle of Bacon).
Will I retire or break 10K?
Moores law says nothing about computer speed doubling. It refers to the transistor count doubling.
Distributed.net relies on the fact that all other factors being equal, brute-forcing a key (decrypting a message with all possible keys) scales linearly with the number of processors involved because of the inherent parallelism. If transistor density doubles, the number of crypto datapaths you can put on a given-sized die doubles. Therefore, Moore's law of gate density translates directly into speed increases.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Now the minimal recommended key size is 400 bits longer, amd most of us use keys 900 bits longer.
Actually, 400 + 100 == 500 bits, and a 512 bit RSA modulus was factored, um, either last year or the year before, I can't remember which. It took about 6 months with an array of about 400 Pentium IIs and Alphas, and one very big Cray, to do some precomputation and the final big set of matrix operations. IIRC, it used a modified version of the Number Field Sieve, which involved a good deal more precomputation, which for larger keys saves more time than it hurts.
Many new specifications (for example, OpenPGP) specify an absolute minimum of 768 bits.
light gun accessory for the Sega Master System (AKA Megadrive)
Megadrive != Master System. Megadrive == Genesis.
According to the above page [10^15] might be a thousand billion or billiard in continental Europe
What does 10^15 have to do with the game of pool?
Will I retire or break 10K?
US Government classified information? What the heck are they using for classified info crypto?
Short answer: Stuff designed and vetted by the NSA.
Also note that 149 trillion years is an upper bound on the strength, and 255 keys/second is pretty damned slow. Brute force is essentially infinitely parrelizable; consider a room with 1,000,000 FCPGAs or ASICs each cracking 100,000 keys/second. That's still about 53914487622781590403 years for a brute force (on average), but you catch my drift, I hope.
The algorithm itself also has to be strong. It would not take much effort to design a block cipher with similar parameters (block size, key lengths, etc), that was trivially breakable. Rijndael is not trivially breakable, but it may (in fact, almost certainly does) have undiscovered weaknesses.
Longer answer:
There are a few major reasons the AES was not simply handed to us, fully formed from the head of the NSA.
One is that they probably don't want to give people any "hints" about design techniques. We've learned a hell of a lot from trying to attack DES, and people have probably re-invented a good portion of the techniques the NSA had at the time. Getting the specifications to a block cipher designed with the NSA's latest design and analysis techniques would probably advance the state of the art by at least 5 years.
Slightly off the topic: Some people at IBM claim DES was invented entirely at IBM, NSA had nothing to do with the design, and so on and so forth. I don't believe this is the case, but whatever. If you believe it is true, S/NSA/NSA+IBM in the above.
Also, people were worried that the NSA would try to put a backdoor in it, or at least, people were worried that other people would worry that the NSA would try to backdoor it. So they wanted people in the academic community to come up with something for them. But obviously the NSA can't trust something like that, at least without a few years of "in house" analysis.
wow, for once the US has a consistent, well thought out naming scheme, and the rest of the world uses something equally bizzare as the imperial system of measures...
They're both pretty well defined. Given n as the prefix-number (mi=1, bi=2, tri=3, quadri=4, quinti=5...):
The U.S. system: n-llion == 10^(3n+3).
The continental system: n-llion == 10^(6n); n-lliard == 10^(6n+3).
Will I retire or break 10K?
Windows was a carefully selected name. At the time Microsoft picked it, windowing was an advanced ability for a PC.
These ideas about avoiding the chance of miscommunication are completely accepted by the people who sell all the consumer products you use. I'm surprised these ideas are so difficult for Slashdot readers to accept. My posts about this have consistently been modded down.
Bush's education improvements were
The basic idea with quantum computing is that you can do compuations on all of the possible inputs simultaneously. It appears that some of the problems we'd like to solve with quantum computers may not be able to be expressed efficiently with the quantum operations at our disposal. Someone mentioned in another post that quantum computers don't seem to be able to break block ciphers as efficiently as they can factor large numbers.
If everything is working properly, the Qbits probably aren't exactly ones or zeroes until you look at them. (In the world of quantum mechanics, particles act differently when you look at them. Look up Schrodinger's Cat on Google if you're not familiar with the basic idea of quantum.) The state of each qbit is a pair of complex numbers, called amplitudes. The square of a magnitude (vector length squared for the spatial thinkers among you. The dot product of a vector and its complex conjugate for those of you that prefer linear algebra.) is a probability.
The qbit is most likely not totally a 1 or a zero. The qbit is partially a one and partially a zero and these parts are represented as amplitudes. This indertiminant state is called a quantum superposition. In Ket notation we say a qbit is alpha |0> + beta |1> where alpha and beta are those complex amplitudes I mentioned earlier.
Stay with me. I'm almost done with the stuff that makes your head swell.
When you observe the qbit, it magically becomes exactly a one or exactly a zero, with probability determined by the amplitudes. Therefore, the sum of the squares of the magnitudes of alpha and beta always add up to one, sonce the probabilities of the qbit being observed as a zero or one must sum to 100%.
So, what does this all mean? It means that all of your computations are done with the qbits being BOTH zero and one at the same time. (Okay, so you set come of the qbits to specific values in order to control the quantum gates.) This means that with n qbits, it's like doing computation on 2^n data points simultaneously. You set up your computations so that in the end when you look at your qbits, you have a high probability of seeing the correct answer.
There's a big problem keeping very many qbits in quantum superposition for very long. A random neutrino or other minor disturbance has the same effect as looking at the qbits in mid computation.
Copyright Violation:"theft, piracy"::Anti-Trust Violation:"thermonuclear price terrorism"<-Overly dramatic language.
the names stop here (unless something's changed since I learned this in middle school) except for google and googleplex.
Google is not a number; it's a search engine. Googleplex is not a number; it's the building that Google operates from. You're thinking of googol and googolplex.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Seems like someone has understood something about patents. According to the Rijndael spec, the algorithm is not patented. Specifically, section 1 of the spec says:
Rijndael or any of its implementations is not and will not be subject to patents.
This should enable Free Software and Open Source Software projects to use the algorithm, and it seems some do already (like GnuPG). It would be interesting to know if the working group has considered patent issues when selecting an encryption algorithm for AES.
"Can liberty be destroyed by the truth?"
Of course. It depends on how selective one is about which truths are allowed.
.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Never trust unproven cryptograpy. Never. I'll stick with 3DES for a long time, because I can rely on it's known level of security.
Did you know that the NSA wants to push AES to replace 3DES ASAP? Doesn't that make you wonder? 3DES's time hasn't come yet (by a long shot), so we can only assume that the NSA consider AES weaker than 3DES (they might even be aware of a backdoor).
It's amazing how difficult this concept is on Slashdot.
I'm not "judging people by their name". I'm NOT judging a person at all. I'm saying don't call your web site or open source software product by a name that has any possible unfortunate meanings or connotations.
I did not invent this idea. It is universally used by people who design professional communication.
Why avoid side communication? Because long experience has shown that products with such communication don't do well in the marketplace.
I repeat. This has NOTHING to do with "judging people by their name".
I have a Korean woman friend whose name is "Go-oon". I suggested that, if she stayed in the U.S., she call herself "Susan". "Go-oon" sounds like "Goon" and is difficult to pronounce correctly for English speakers.
She didn't accept my suggestion; she didn't stay in the U.S. long. But she certainly did not take my suggestion as anything negative. She was 19. Why is it that a 19-year-old Korean woman understands this issue, but not many Slashdot readers? (Incidentally, she ran Linux. So, she is an above-average 19-year-old Korean woman. But still.)
Bush's education improvements were
On a nit picky note about your otherwise informative posting, the "255 per second" in the article you quote should actually have been "2 to the power of 55" (ie. 36028797018963968) keys per second, which IS rather a lot...
"It's overkill, of course. But you can never have too much overkill." - Anonymous Slashdot Coward
But maybe that's the difference between you and I. I'm proud to be a geek/nerd, and I'm proud to call myself that. A lot of my friends are also the same. As you mentioned, maybe we don't fit the geek/nerd stereotype, but if enough of us that don't fit the stereotype call ourselves by that name, maybe perception will change.
You're just parroting the generally accepted line for what a geek/nerd is. I'm working to change that. In reality, there are more geeks/nerds like me, than there are as you describe, so why shouldn't perception get changed ?
I'm also obviously less concerned about what other people think about me and the things that I do. Obviously what my wife says is law, but that's just natural ;-)
We've managed to change the perception in our wider circle of friends that being a geek/nerd is a "good thing".
Maybe my communication skills aren't as bad as you thought, eh ?
PS: If you want to keep up this communication, please just send email, I'm sure I don't need to bore anybody else with my mindless banter.
yeah, theres no 'E'... Its a [not so] secret US guvverment communications program... Fed ICQ i guess. Oh and its been in the hands of terrorists for at least 15 years, and one copy moved hands to Bin Laden & Co. just before 11/09/2k+1.
If i just typed a load of BS or whatever, sorry, i cant find the magazine right now.
Ah yeah the point of this post: What stopped them using a VPN layer or whatever? Encryption on the packets with some decent security regarding the keys.
Oh one other thing: exactly how the fuck does one get a net connection in an afghan cave? FFS i cant even get broadband here!! [Surrey, UK]
Ali
As for whether Moore's law will actually fail in 12 years or not, that remains to be seen. Looking at current processor designs tells you nothing about that: current processor and systems designs should have been abandoned decades ago. The only reason we still stick with them is because it has been easier to push processes than design. I very much hope we'll hit the limit on processes soon so that we can then focus on getting better performance through better overall systems design.
..in any sense of the word. Most have no clue about software design in any sort, and consider the ability to write a shell script makes them a 'programmer'... more like dweebs and wannabes with too much time on their hands.
-
Hmmm. Yes, I see it now. >> TODO
damn cutting and pasting.. or just "damn, I should have read the preview..."
;-)
As if AES will replace DES. Sure it may be a better technology, but with good management techniques, DES can be kept secure. We have already seen this happenning! Triple DES is now in use on modern operating systems. And im sure it will continue to evolve.
But who is going to use AES? Im sure software developers arent going to rush in flocks to "upgrade" their apps to support AES. Sure, AES might sound good, but are we sure its safe? Being only 4 years old it is very young, c/w things like RSA and DES. And DES isnt that broken, is it?
And whats to say that AES isnt backdoored? Some people still speculate DES is backdoored, but it is yet to be proven.
Call me paranoid, thats just my opinion :)
On a nit picky note about your otherwise informative posting, the "255 per second" in the article you quote should actually have been "2 to the power of 55"
Oops. I was just going off what the original post said. I thought it was weird that they were says 255 keys/second - I mean, a 100 Mhz Pentium could do that!
Nice name, but room for improvement.
I see your point. Part of the problem was that Linus did not care how it was pronounced until people began asking him.
Please, however, give me examples of truly bad names of commercial products.
Bush's education improvements were
How do these hardware-DES codebreakers know when they've got the right key? I mean, it's not like a team of NSA folks are looking at all the output. So I'm assuming a lexigraphic analysis is done after trying each key. Now, IANAC (I am not a cryptogropher), but wouldn't it be effective to use hacker-speak in your plaintext? After all, if you can crypt then you can talk like a l33t d00d. Even better, sprinkle your plaintext with some binary codes like backspace, some 8 bit ascii, etc.
snotnose
I imagine its similar - the conjecture still holds for any value of P...
thats if you had to try all the possibilities.You could get it right on the first try. Likely? no.Possible?yes.
It doesn't take into acoung advance in algorithms and hardware.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
There's never been a blind demiurge that wasn't a raving nutter.
******
"I do not play at being God -- I AM GOD!