From: "Perry E. Metzger" <perry@imsi.com>
Date: Tue, 9 Aug 94 05:56:05 PDT
To: Justin Lister <ruf@osiris.cs.uow.edu.au>
Subject: Re: amateur ciphers
In-Reply-To: <199408090541.AA14118@osiris.cs.uow.edu.au>
Message-ID: <9408091254.AA22930@snark.imsi.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



Justin Lister says:
> > The only really reasonable symmetric key ciphers out there in
> > publically described form these days are DES, 3-DES and IDEA. There
> > are a couple of things that may be okay, but which aren't out in the
> > public literature (RC2 and RC4), a couple of things that are likely
> > okay but which we are REALLY not going to find anything out about for
> > a while (Skipjack :-) and a couple of things that are promising (like
> > Coppersmith's new SEAL stream cipher, which looks quite interesting
> > indeed.)
> 
> I wonder on which evidence you base your assumptions ?? 
> (I would assume schneiers book)

More the papers in the public literature, actually.

> While Schneier's book is a very good guide, it is not very advisable to make
> assumptions on the security of algorithms based on his book. One should look
> at results from those performing cryptanalysis of such ciphers. Such as
> biham and matsui.

I fully agree. I was reading in this field a long time before Bruce
even began writing.

Perry