1801 Cipher Solved
Interesting piece of cryptographic history: a cipher designed by Robert Patterson and sent to Thomas Jefferson. The full story is behind a paywall.
EDITED TO ADD (4/14): The cipher itself is here.
Entries Tagged "cryptography"
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More European Chip and Pin Insecurity
“Optimised to Fail: Card Readers for Online Banking,” by Saar Drimer, Steven J. Murdoch, and Ross Anderson.
Abstract
The Chip Authentication Programme (CAP) has been introduced by banks in Europe to deal with the soaring losses due to online banking fraud. A handheld reader is used together with the customer’s debit card to generate one-time codes for both login and transaction authentication. The CAP protocol is not public, and was rolled out without any public scrutiny. We reverse engineered the UK variant of card readers and smart cards and here provide the first public description of the protocol. We found numerous weaknesses that are due to design errors such as reusing authentication tokens, overloading data semantics, and failing to ensure freshness of responses. The overall strategic error was excessive optimisation. There are also policy implications. The move from signature to PIN for authorising point-of-sale transactions shifted liability from banks to customers; CAP introduces the same problem for online banking. It may also expose customers to physical harm.
EDITED TO ADD (3/12): More info.
All-or-Nothing Encryption Program
Programs staple and unstaple perform all-or-nothing encryption. Just demonstration code, but interesting all the same.
The Doghouse: Singularics
This is priceless:
Our advances in Prime Number Theory have led to a new branch of mathematics called Neutronics. Neutronic functions make possible for the first time the ability to analyze regions of mathematics commonly thought to be undefined, such as the point where one is divided by zero. In short, we have developed a new way to analyze the undefined point at the singularity which appears throughout higher mathematics.
This new analytic technique has given us profound insight into the way that prime numbers are distributed throughout the integers. According to RSA’s website, there are over 1 billion licensed instances of RSA public-key encryption in use in the world today. Each of these instances of the prime number based RSA algorithm can now be deciphered using Neutronic analysis. Unlike RSA, Neutronic Encryption is not based on two large prime numbers but rather on the Neutronic forces that govern the distribution of the primes themselves. The encryption that results from Singularic’s Neutronic public-key algorithm is theoretically impossible to break.
You’d think that anyone who claims to be able to decrypt RSA at the key lengths in use today would, maybe, um, demonstrate that at least once. Otherwise, this can all be safely ignored as snake oil.
The founder and CTO also claims to have proved the Riemann Hypothesis, if you care to wade through the 63-page paper.
EDITED TO ADD (3/30): The CTO has responded to me.
The Doghouse: Raidon's Staray-S Encrypted Hard Drives
Turns out the algorithm is linear.
When you’re buying security products, you have to trust the vendor. That’s why I don’t buy any of these hardware-encrypted drives. I don’t trust the vendors.
xkcd on Cryptanalysis
Good xkcd comic on the difference between theoretical and practical cryptanalysis.
List of NSA Video Courses from 1991
Interesting, at least to me. It helps if you know the various code names and the names of the different equipment.
Stupid Security Tricks: Key Management
It’s smart to encrypt USB memory devices, but it’s stupid to attach the encryption key to the device.
Health bosses today admitted the memory stick was encrypted, but the password had been attached to the device when it went missing.
I’m sure they were so proud that they chose a secure encryption algorithm.
Another Recently Released NSA Document
American Cryptology during the Cold War, 1945-1989, by Thomas R. Johnson: documents 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6.
In response to a declassification request by the National Security Archive, the secretive National Security Agency has declassified large portions of a four-part “top-secret Umbra” study, American Cryptology during the Cold War. Despite major redactions, this history discloses much new information about the agency’s history and the role of SIGINT and communications intelligence (COMINT) during the Cold War. Researched and written by NSA historian Thomas Johnson, the three parts released so far provide a frank assessment of the history of the Agency and its forerunners, warts-and-all.
Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.