Modern History of Cryptography Techniques

Heather writes "The encryption scheme you rely on today might be full of holes just a few years down the road. Learn how far we've come in the last few decades, and why your apps need to be ready for change. This article builds on a previous article about Enigma, Germany's WWII-era encryption system."

Comments

What?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why can I never undestand articles about cryptography?

They always seem to be written in a way that makes them incomprehensible.

Re:What?

[Anonymous Coward]

OK, let me be clear.
Alice ("A") writes a story about Cryptography ("C") to the IBM Developerworks site ("D"). Bob ("B") is watching over her shoulder, essentially intercepting the photons ("-->P")
Bob, then submits the story to the Slashdot ("S")
Anonymous Coward Reader ("R") is confused because they are written in a way (encrypted "+*+") to make them incomprehensible.

So essentially, you are saying you don't understand:
R ?= A(D)--->P(B)+*+"--->S
What could be simpler than that???

I just encrypt disks full of white noise nowadays

[mikeophile]

At some point, decryption techniques will evolve to translate it to something cool.

Re:Why a few years down the road?

[rholliday]

I suppose technically that's correct. But, "The encryption schem you use today has holes in it, and the tools will get small enough to go through those holes just a few years down the road." just doesn't quite roll off the tongue. :)

Mod parent up

[utopianfiat]

That is really awesome.
Now I just need the US Army Guide To Understanding The US Army Guide To Code Breaking

Break down

[cmdrTacyo]

Let me break it down for ya'll
From RSA to USA I'm ready to ball
No matter how complex encryption might fail
No matter if it's created at MIT, Harvard or Yale
So it's only temporary encryption
Uncrackable crap is only fiction
Cause security is only a vixen

New CD /. Pimp in stores soon

Re:I just encrypt disks full of white noise nowada

[utopianfiat]

I think it'd be fun to try to compress white noise files, and see how well it compresses.

WHITE NOISE DRINKING GAME:
Ingredients:
BSD-based systems with random number generators, need to be the same or it's just unfair.
Your favorite method of compression.
Alcohol

Steps:
1) each of you dd if=/dev/urandom of=./noise.txt for however big you want the file to be. Bigger is better, imho.
2) bzip2 noise.txt or your favorite compression algorithm
3) whoever's file size is the highest has to drink.

You can mix it up and write a shell script that does the following:
TIME=`date +%s`
bzip2 $1
TIME=`date +%s`-$TIME
echo $TIME sec. elapsed

HA!

[MosesJones]

I just used MD5 as my encryption mechanism and the files will NEVER be recovered.

This "joke" such as it is was based on a real world experience where the "smart" IT chap at a company I helped had in his words...

"Tried a number of different compression and encryption approaches and MD5 consistently gave the smallest files"

I asked if they had ever done a recovery, and strangely they had not... it was fun watching them try.

Re:HA!

[utopianfiat]

"Oh my god, MD5 ate the files!"
"WHAT?"
"It just finished digesting!"

Thank you, I'll be here all week.

And if it gets cracked...

[Overzeetop]

you can just send the justice department after them for a DMCA violation. Worked for Adobe :-)

Lal!!

[Datamonstar]

Jrr! V whfg YBIR pelcgbtencul!

Re:AES Far from Secure

[Anonymous Coward]

Rubber hose cryptanalysis can get you the key and/or passphrase to any encryption system, even a one time pad, in minutes to hours depending on how resistant the person is to physical persuasion.

Re:Why a few years down the road?

[squoozer]

No no. Encryption is like a pair of socks. Just like socks over time encryption wears out and develops holes. The holes can be fixed by darning er patching but they aren't ever as comfy as before.

Re:Pet Peeve

[arkanes]

On behalf of PhDs everywhere: fuck you. Use MD if it's really important for you to flaunt yourself. Or you could just take a hint from *every other* profession in the *entire world*, and not think that your choice of profession entitles you to a special honorific.

Re:World War II encryption tech

[imsabbel]

Its called security by obscurity and is generally considered not cool.