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"Nearly Unbreakable" Encryption Scheme Inspired By Human Biology
rjmarvin (3001897) writes "Researchers at the U.K.'s Lancaster University have reimagined the fundamental logic behind encryption, stumbling across a radically new way to encrypt data while creating software models to simulate how the human heart and lungs coordinate rhythms. The encryption method published in the American Physical Society journal and filed as a patent entitled 'Encoding Data Using Dynamic System Coupling,' transmits and receive multiple encrypted signals simultaneously, creating an unlimited number of possibilities for the shared encryption key and making it virtually impossible to decrypt using traditional methods. One of the researchers, Peter McClintock, called the encryption scheme 'nearly unbreakable.'
Every intelligence everywhere can invent an encryption scheme it can't break.
Don't ever use any crypto algorithm the experts haven't been attacking and publishing about for a while.
The keyword here is nearly, which means it can be broken.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
Not that I've actually done my own research, but what qualifications do these folks have to state the security of an encryption mechanism? Everybody who finds a new way to twist a message thinks it's secure.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
I guarantee it.
TFA contains no actual information, just an assertion that the interaction between poorly-described models of "biological" systems might kinda possibly maybe make them money because the world needs car door key fobs, or something like that.
Deep.
It should link here:http://www.sdtimes.com/content/article.aspx?ArticleID=69025&page=1 Yeah, if you could fix it, that would be greaaaat.
Red flag #1 publication to inappropriate forum. If your "breakthrough" in physics only got published in the Journal of English as a Foreign Language, it's most likely bunk. Likewise then, if you've got some crypto results and the best place you could find to publish them was a physics journal, that's a bad sign. There are journals about crypto. If this wasn't sent to them it means nobody serious has looked at this. If it was sent and they declined it means serious people laughed their heads off.
Red flag #2 use of phrase "nearly unbreakable" which doesn't mean anything. Anybody who knew what the hell they were talking about would steer clear of that phrase, but oh my, if you're clueless it sounds impressive. So, probably clueless then.
I'm calling bullshit.
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
I don't know whether or not this idea actually works, or what level of security it may or may not provide, but it's addressing an already thoroughly-solved problem. It appears to provide a symmetric key cipher, which means -- regardless of how radical the approach may or may not be -- it's in direct competition with algorithms like AES and the multitude of other well-respected and heavily-researched block and stream ciphers. The abstract and summary mention "an unlimited number of possibilities for a shared encryption key", but existing algorithms already provide enormous key spaces.
Of course, some cryptanalytic breakthrough could provide a way to break all existing ciphers, but who's to say the same breakthrough wouldn't impact systems based on this idea. And, actually, we already have another approach which uses special hardware at each end, Quantum Cryptography, which can absolutely guarantee security, unless our understanding of the Uncertainty Principle is wrong. Or unless there are bugs in the physical implementation, which there have been, and I see no reason that this "Dynamic Systems Coupling" approach wouldn't be subject to the same kinds of problems.
So... meh.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Anyone can invent an encryption scheme so clever that he or she can't think of a way to break it.
The author's claim that it's very hard to break only means that THEY don't know how to break it. That's meaningless, because anyone and everyone can come up with a puzzle they don't know how to solve. That doesn't mean it's hard, just that they don't know how it's done.
A trivial example would be a kindergartener who might observe that if you encode a message by writing it with letters, they don't kow how to read that message. That's only because the kid doesn't know how to read. It in no way suggests that reading is impossible. For many Slashdot readers, compiling a message into a Windows resource file makes unreadable _to_them. Windows resource files are of course quite easy to read, if you know how. These researchers don't know how to read their own encoding. So what? That doesn't mean _I_ don't know how to read their stuff.
Their scheme does have one attribute that's good - it can generate long keys. So can a random number generator. They MAY have a good idea, but we won't know until alot of other people try to break their encryption and fail.
"Global Warming" aka "Climate Change" I do not deny; it's the man made component which I refuse to believe.
Even if this is true, the NSA will figure out a way to make it insecure. Under the pretense of security they insure that the ability to do evil things is built in to all communication technology.
Why is Snark Required?
There's nothing in the protocol description about key sharing. If you already have a way to share keys, why not just use a one time pad that's proven to be unbreakable?
Many of you may know FeFe "Felix von Leitner" Extreme-Coder/CCC-Member with his infamous but german blog "https://blog.fefe.de"
His statement/no citation but sense of words:
"REAL crpytologists will take
1.) a long time,
2.) many attack tests and
3.) mathematical proofs
before they dare to call a crypto safe ENOUGH"
And this statement remained valid till now, just think about the eliptic curve that was shaped to comfort the NSA.
So if you accept fefes prediction you can really deduce that the contrary to the researchers claims will be the case, because of many reasons.
1.) narrow sight - if you're doing research your biggest enemy is you, because you are in danger of being so full of yourself or your idea that you won't see the invariants.
Just remeber how often you have written code you thought must work 100%, and got supprised because you didn't catch an "invariant" that was actually in plane sight.
2.) hostile thinking - and well this is much worse we can suspect one thing especially after the "Rescola" Gambit
The agencies gotten too smart to only taint the sources, because that's to obvious you need a social drive like a group leader of a standardization group, or the official statement of people with an unscathed background (social engineering people into a certain behaviour).
Be paranoid, don't trust people analyse their arguments!
Someone please tell me the patent is more about the machinery used and not so much the algorithm.
The paper contains none of the cryptographic analysis necessary to show that this is a secure cryptographic system. It's just another one of these "let's take a chaotic dynamical system and use it for cryptography" papers.
The paper doesn't tell you much about cryptography, but it does illustrate the failures of peer review.
From the abstract it seems that they are claiming:
1) Boy, those chaotic systems look complex.
2) Gee they can synchronize
3) If we superimpose other chaotic systems on top, then it looks even more complexer.
So something like Walsh codes implemented badly. Walsh codes have nothing to do with cryptography btw.
What they haven''t shown is a lower bound for brute for attack complexity, or why it is resistant to any of the normal attack methods. I don't see why an imposter could not sync to the source the same way the intended recipient does. From the paper, I see several linear systems of equations describing the chaotic oscillators.
This will fall fast when a real cryptographer has go at it.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
"Why are you so sure it's not the not step"
Can you rephrase that, I'm not understanding what you mean. As far as what I'm sure of, I said, "they May have a good idea, we won't know until ..."
I didn't say they don't have an awesome idea (or that they do). I'm saying there is no reason to think it's good or bad, based on the researchers not knowing how to decrypt it. Anyone can string together a series of mathematical operations that they don't know how to undo.
"Climate change" is not a "downgrade" to global warming. It's simply better wording to avoid denial from idiots who don't understand math (i.e. means) and say "wow it's really cold this winter, global warming is bs!" Nothing has changed; we still know the mean temperature is increasing and that the increase is caused by human activity. But the new wording is less susceptible to idiotic misinterpretation.
you never did answer his questions, infact, you seem to shut the argument down rather quickly which leads me to believe you dont have one.
If his logical fallacy is wrong, whats your argument? how is it that our temperature in a 100 years has grown so fast when normally stuff like this takes thousands of years. Do you really believe that cutting all these trees down and dumping all the co2 in the air is ok? if so why do you believe that? Do you not understand how greenhouse gasses work? If so, explain how dumping a bunch of co2 in the air is ok, if not go read up on it and then answer my question...its ok, ill wait....... What about how the temperature has risen with the co2 levels to a frighting degree of similarity?
There are alot of reasons to believe man is involved, can you provide some logical reason why man is not involved?
Please provide some intelligent argument, your little one liners are cute and amusing, but in no way do the explain the opposing side, infact...i have never really heard a opposing argument, no logical explanation for any of my questions and many more.
OK, first bypass the click troll and get to the actual paper.
The general idea seems to be to transmit a large amount of noisy data per plaintext bit. Historically, crypto schemes which make the input much bigger are disfavored, but communications bandwidth is cheaper now and that might be OK.
The author of the paper seems to have fallen into the old trap of thinking that that analog signals have infinite amounts of data in them. He writes things like ''The encrypting key space is unbounded." and "The choice of the form of coupling functions comes from a set of functions that is not bounded." ("High-end" audio people also fall for this.) In reality, at some point you hit a noise threshold, and, anyway, down at the bottom, electrons and photons are discrite. Also, to be usable, whatever is used for the key has to be of finite size, and preferably not too big.
"No new cypher is worth looking at unless it comes from someone who has already broken a very hard one. - Friedman.
You're only as good as your last RAE :-)
http://physicsworld.com/cws/ar...
"An unofficial Physics World ranking that lists departments according to their average research score shows Lancaster on top and Cambridge close behind. Both departments also received the maximum 5* rating in the last RAE in 2001, but the other 5* departments - Oxford, Southampton and Imperial College London - fell outside the top 10 this time round. "
Having a look at the paper, I can absolutely see that the encryption technique seems on the face of it to exceed computable solution. What I would need to be convinced about is the integrity of the communication; is what you get at the end of it guaranteed to be perfectly reflective of what you put into it?
(I can also see a sketch proof to the effect that the overall system can be made reliable with a probability approaching 1 - for arbitrarily small , but that's macroscopic behaviour. Microscopic, the system looks like it's capable of handling very regular systems very well, but given the reliance on Bayesian inference will drop reliability for anything with some very likely inputs and some less likely outputs.)
Myu:
If his logical fallacy is wrong, whats your argument? how is it that our temperature in a 100 years has grown so fast when normally stuff like this takes thousands of years.
One argument is that it doesn't take thousands of years. That the sampled period just does not account for the whole temperature variance. Otherwise how do you explain the medieval warm period or the roman warm period?
Do you really believe that cutting all these trees down and dumping all the co2 in the air is ok?
In developed countries the amount of forested area is increasing not decreasing. Most of the decrease in forested area is in places where they practice slash and burn agriculture. You know the kind that does not use chemical fertilizer.
Take it up with Aleister Crowley, kiddo.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
I'm willing to bet that the amount of forested area has not increased over the last few centuries.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
It goes way beyond the software networking stack, by necessity that's only a very small slice of the pie. You're looking at a single layer and talking about implementing the model. The model covers everything down to the wire. The model isn't broken by focusing on one layer, it's broken by people who focus on that one layer and decide the rest of the system is broken.
This is the perfect example of security through obscurity. If I were to use spread spectrum communications with random modulation types and data encoding schemes I can claim this too.
Whilst I am not the AC which refused to believe in man made climate change, I do share one problem which seems to be obvious to climate change, the illegal tree felling industry needs to stop. full stop.
Trees do more for this planet then most people realize.
So... man can change the climate by cutting down trees?
Is that the only thing he could do to affect it?
No sig today...
don't have a very good track record, at the moment.
Most of the comprehension difficulty is not with 'warming', it's with 'global'.
The description match some of the crypto in the NSA museum. This is not new. I should ask them if the algorythm the KY-3 used is declassified now. They'd made the hardware FOYO before I got out in the 80s.
http://www.sdtimes.com/content/article.aspx?ArticleID=69025&page=1
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
6) Did you notice the :-) ?
Ah, yes I was implying that, my mistake. Your phrasing is rather unusual in the first half of that sentence, I still can't get it to parse into something coherent. The "feel" I got though was that you were stating a common-cause with climate change, despite some non-specified disagreement.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
But to put it in perspective the volcanic eruption in Europe a few years ago contributed more So2 and Co2 than man has contributed in the last century world wide.
Utter, utter bollocks. The two numbers aren't even in the same ballpark.
You remember there were a bunch of flights cancelled due to the volcanic ash cloud? They alone would have contributed more CO2 than the bloody volcano:
"The grounding of European flights avoided about 3.44×108 kg of CO2 emissions per day, while the volcano emitted about 1.5×108 kg of CO2 per day."
Wiki before inserting boot into chops next time.
..Mullah or Pope, Preacher or Poet, who was it wrote: "Give any one species too much rope and they'll fuck it up"?
DES was 'nearly unbreakable' in the 70's
Worst. Signature. Ever.
How on earth do we end up talking Climate Science in a thread about Encryption?
Slashdot has the worst track-record when it comes to staying on topic :-)
More like this, please.
-kgj
Oh, yes, and the Titanic was unsinkable.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
True, but be honest. Isn't that why you're here?
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
thats what it sounds to me...
Good you cleared that up.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."