From: Ryan Anderson <ryan@michonline.com>
Date: Fri, 23 Jan 1998 05:02:04 +0800
To: "William H. Geiger III" <whgiii@invweb.net>
Subject: Re: Misty???
In-Reply-To: <199801220815.DAA29824@users.invweb.net>
Message-ID: <Pine.GSO.3.95.980122154534.24995a-100000@king>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



> Someone on the OpenPGP list was asking for an asignment for an algorithm
> id in the OpenPGP RFC for Misty1 (from Japan whoda thought <g>). I made my
> post about snake-oil and got chastised by hal@pgp.com as he seems to think
> it's a respectable algorithm:

Well, he said that he wasn't aware of any serious cryptanalysis,
specifically on this list.  In all honesty, that's a fully truthful
statement.  Tim May has conveniently confirmed that there *has* been some
real cryptanalysis on it, confirming that it's not a good algorithm, but
it's not snake-oil.  (If it get's submitted for peer review, can you
really call it that?)

I'm going to wager that all Hal was saying is that he had seen no evidence
to that effect, and that you had presentted none.

> 
> >>Misty is described in the proceedings of the most recent annual
> >>conference on fast encryption algorithms.  It is designed to be provably
> >>resistant to linear and differential cryptanalysis.  As a new set of
> >>algorithms (a few variants exist under the "Misty" label), it is one of
> >>many where a "wait and see" attitude is appropriate to see how it holds
> >>up.  As a patented algorithm, it may have trouble competing with
> >>alternatives that are free of restrictions.
> >>
> >>However your charge that it is "snake-oil" seems unfounded.  It appears
> >>to be a respectable academic development effort, within the mainstream
> >>of cryptographic research, and has some reasonable-looking theory behind
> >>it. As far as I know there has been no cryptanalysis or technical
> >>commentary of any sort regarding Misty on the cypherpunks mailing list.