Cryptography Today.


In a league table of sciences cryptography doesn’t make it even to the
bottom of the ladder but that is not important when the importance of
this communications tool is taken into account. The name of the game
is security of communications not academic hype. In truth
cryptography is a nefarious business and doesn’t warrant the dignity
of even a topic place in any of the popular sciences least of all
mathematics.

To get to the point quickly, theoretically unbreakable cryptography is
something that should have been put to bed long before now especially
with the arrival of ASCII, computer science and programming in that
order. Instead of that we are looking at an industry that is
continually promoting and living off its own defects while settling
for what can only be called second-rate ‘practically unbreakable’
cryptography. The plethora of splinter-topic postings to sci crypt
confirm this, these postings should not be necessary in such large
numbers in any basically complete science but instead should be stock
material in course books of that subject.

The decision to pursue number-theoretic cryptography immediately
following the advent of these powerful resources is, with hindsight a
big mistake and is responsible for this industry taking off in a wrong
direction.

What we are looking at to day is a series of highly intelligent
versions of the same mistake – the thinking seems to be that being
intelligent backed up with sufficient political support will make them
appear right when clearly there is no long term future for any of
these ciphers, they are fundamentally flawed largely because of the
highly structured data type i.e. integers of any base that they use.
What is deplorable also is the myriad of confusing red herrings that
they generate as postings by readers to this news group. That can
only be taken as symptomatic of the inherent weakness and lack of
integrity of these ciphers. Things that are scientifically sound
usually settle down relatively quickly like for instance, strength of
materials, mechanics, thermodynamics and indeed all the traditional
sciences.

The recent (restarted) number of postings to sci crypt is in excess of
500000 which is a seriously bad indictment of the industry. What we
are looking at is a core of three or four second rate ciphers and a
huge satellite industry comprised of handbooks, conferences,
cryptology institutions and university courses that live on the
defects of this small central group of second-class ciphers.

Clearly, the time has come admit that the first half century of
computer since has been wasted in cryptography because not sufficient
use of this powerful resource was made in the early days by the
researchers of the seventies. It can be safely said also that modern
crypto people are not sufficiently skillful (if at all) in modern
programming languages and are easily put off therefore by the
difficulty of interpreting unusual algorithms. It is true also that
there is an unwillingness to go off the beaten track in pursuit of new
methods.


Summarising.

The ball has been in the wrong court for too long, that is to say that
right from the outset of ASCII and computer programming,
cryptography has lost out at the hands of the status quo and should
now be reassigned to others such as joint applied mathematicians /
computer programmers / cryptographers who have a broader portfolio of
design capability and mathematical modeling. Aspirants to any
respectable level of even conversational ability in cryptography
should be strong on at least two of these sujects and willing to learn
the third, either that or go on with frustrated sniping at the
postings of properly informed people.

It is time to stop the hypnotic circling of the light bulb by badly
informed people. It could well be a case also of jump now before you
are pushed later by the arrival of quantum computing, that could be
very soon possibly.

- adacrypt



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Relevant Pages

  • Re: Cryptography Today.
    ... To get to the point quickly, theoretically unbreakable cryptography is ... Instead of that we are looking at an industry that is ... The plethora of splinter-topic postings to sci crypt ... integrity of these ciphers. ...
    (sci.crypt)
  • SD Cryptography - Introduction.
    ... In this cryptography the entities do not use the universal data set of ... special design. ... it is essential to the operation of the ciphers. ... alphabet is deliberately destroyed so as to confound all mathematical ...
    (sci.crypt)
  • Just think about it ...a cipher is a Synthetic One-way Function
    ... dedicated trapdoor that is assigned to it by Alice alone and knowledge ... that means cryptography of horrendous complexity. ... has fallen into the classic trap of not being able to see the wood for ... one-way functions called ciphers.. ...
    (sci.crypt)
  • Re: SD Cryptography - Introduction.
    ... ciphers are to be seen on http://www.adacrypt.com. ... one-time pad cipher called ?ASCII_Pad Cipher?, ... If they re-use the key (parts of the synchronized database), ... Most cryptography only requires keeping the *KEY* safe, ...
    (sci.crypt)
  • Cryptography FAQ (01/10: Overview)
    ... This is the first of ten parts of the sci.crypt FAQ. ... importance like cryptography you have to expect that some people and ... What are some group-theoretic properties of product ciphers? ... What is public-key cryptography? ...
    (sci.crypt)
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