User talk:Birkett

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Contents

[edit] Welcome

Hello, welcome to Wikipedia.

[edit]

Here are some tasks you can do:

You might find these links helpful in creating new pages or helping with the above tasks: How to edit a page, How to write a great article, Naming conventions, Manual of Style. You should read our policies at some point too.

If you have any questions, see the help pages, add a question to the village pump or ask me on my talk page. I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian!

  • You can sign your name using three tildes, like this: ~~~. If you use four, you can add a datestamp too.
  • If you ever think a page or image should be deleted, please list it at the votes for deletion page. There is also a votes for undeletion page if you want to retrieve something that you think should not have been deleted.

Again, welcome! - UtherSRG 01:40, 6 Feb 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Cypher

"Cypher" is actually an alternate spelling. No need to move articles around just because it's a little less common. Goplat 16:52, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I never doubted that it was an alternative spelling... it is just extremely infrequently used in books about cryptography. I was just trying to make the crypto section a little more consistent with other resources people might have read... But I can stop if you really don't want that. Sorry if changing all those pages annoyed you. Birkett 17:03, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)

B, I am, in this instance, a user of the sacred 'y'. You might want to refer to the discussions (and pointers to discussions) at Talk:Cryptography (under cy v ci) on this question. Some of it, at least, is more or less amusing. English spelling is so chaotic that any claim of correctness is dubious on its face, and the whole thing is maddening in the extreme -- 'ghoti' spelling the common class name for all those animals with fins that live under water!!!
On English WP (and others?) this is recognized by lists of acceptable alternative spellings, by a policy regarding English/American spelling differences, and in the crypto corner, by a sort of agreement that both are acceptable, but shouldn't be mixed in one article.
On another subject altogether, what sort of maths are you studying, or are you at a pre-specialization stage? ww 16:14, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I am an undergraduate going into my 4th year of a masters programme. I've mainly been studying pure maths - group theory, number theory, analysis, a little about the foundations of mathematics (set theory, logic) that sort of thing. I'm hoping to do a PhD, most likely in Cryptography, although I have only done one unit of cryptography so far, I'd like to do more. Birkett 12:04, 31 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Sorry not to have noticed your reply sooner. I don't have your talk page watchlisted. Interesting that you're interested in crypto.
Since you're interested in the subject (and in some of its oddities, perhaps the most interesting bits, no?) you might want to consult Malicious Cryptography by Young and Yung, Wiley (2004). It's a maddeningly written book (and poorly laid out too) as it mixes anecdote, lengthy fictional scenarios (the entire 1st chapter), high level math perspective, and speculation. However much trouble there is in getting it across, the authors do know their stuff, and the biblio is both pretty up to date and includes some historical perspective stuff. Security Engineering by Ross Anderson (also Wiley) has a broader perspective and isn't so much of a roller coaster to read, but is valuable in providing some real world perspective for the applicaiton of the maths bits. Very well written too. Anderson's group at Cambridge does offer degrees, including the PhD. Might be an interesting possibility. Anyway, best wishes and I hope you continue to keep working on the WP and especially in the crypto corner. You have of course seen the WikiProject:Cryptography page? ww 17:43, 17 Sep 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Save the Game!

Help us track down verifiable sources to bring The Game back! Go to SaveTheGame.org! Bkkbrad 20:05, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] reversion at public key crypto

Reasons for the reversion (from memory), all practical. 1. brute force is not generally an effective attack agaisnt modern public key crypto. 2 confusing wording (ie, 'severe'). 3. CAs are not a way to assure security. They are a way to push the problem back one stage. There is agoodly amount of commercial interest in promoting the idea, but that really doesn't establish much. Consider the energy policy of hte US, for instance.

On another subject, did you ever look at Malicious Cryptography? ww 08:13, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

In response to "brute force is not generally an effective attack agaisnt modern public key crypto" - I agree with you and never claimed that it was effective. The section in question currently says that there are no currently known public-key encryption schemes which are secure against a "mathematical attack", which it the same thing as a computationally unbounded adversary. Maybe wording it as "an adversary with unlimited computational power" would be better for the target audience, I don't know... "Mathematical attack" isn't very good terminology. It is simple to prove a much stronger claim - namely that there cannot be a public-key encryption scheme which is secure against a computationally unbounded adversary, the proof is that you can always do a brute force attack, as I described in my edit. I happy to point out that better attacks are usually possible against any particular scheme.
In response to the confusing wording, I will try to improve it. Do you have any suggestions?
In response to the Certificate authority issue, I agree that it is not a perfect solution, since one needs to trust a third party and have an authentic copy of their key, but it is about as good as is possible with current knowledge. It seems clear that some authenticated data must be required before any secure distribution of public keys can take place, otherwise an adversary can do anything the legitimate users could do, and thus them into accepting a fake key.
The paragraph in question is badly written at the moment, because it talks about developing methods of key distribution, then goes on to say that the attack is more interesting if the adversary can corrupt a certificate authority - without explaining what one is, or why it's relevant.
I would like to make the changes again, this time trying to address each of the comments you have made, is that ok? Birkett 19:57, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
B, Of course an additional edit pass is fine with me. This is WP, after all. However, I find that keeping Aunt Ermintrude in mind when writing helps to avoid some of the hidden assumptions I saw in the edit, and that you note above. Further, I suggest that there should be a clear distinctino between theoretical results (eg, Shannon re one time pad, or some of Rabin's work or ...), practical issues (CAs are about a good as one can do today, but are clearly insecure against many attacks,...). As a practical (not theoretically adequate) matter, brute force in asymmetric key encryption is easily defeated -- use a longer -- randomly chosen -- key. How long, and how to assure random in the cryptographic sense are less clear. A point likely worth making as Aunt Ermintrude will not bring an adequate perspective to such an article.
The responsible explanation, to those without a full perspective, of such subjects as many in cryptography is not easy, and yet it is those folks for whom we are writing here. It is very easy to give a partial or subtly incomplete account, leaving the reader with an impression far from reality. In cryptography, it has long seemed to me that an appreciation of the many and varied ways crypto systems can collapse into fecklessness is a paramount goal for WP crypto articles. It is insufficient to understand the details of an algorithm (or even an overview) without perspective on the eternal battel between Mallory and the rest of us, and thus the contingency saturated nature of cryptography in actual use. ww 13:06, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "Orthodox"

Regarding the image from the German Wikipedia translated to English ("prevailing religions"), the Orthodoxy (Oriental) in Ethiopia and the Orthodoxy (Eastern) in Europe are unrelated. Saimdusan Talk|Contribs 21:30, 24 February 2008 (UTC)