Category talk:Cryptography

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Shouldn't this category be called Cryptology? Lapo Luchini 20:47, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)

This question pops up from time to time (along with the naming of cryptography, list of cryptography topics etc). The argument is that there are (at least) two ways of describing the subject. The first is to describe the entire field as "cryptology", divided into "cryptanalysis" and "cryptography". The second is to describe the entire field as "cryptography". I think the second style is preferable simply because it's much more commonly used. — Matt Crypto 00:38, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] More Subcategories?

Shouldn't 'Classical ciphers' 'Stream ciphers' and any other categories for ciphers be subcategories of Cryptography? Hugo999 00:59, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Alice and Bob - the theory

Any chance of a section on the theory of Alice and Bob, where things can go wrong, and how? Maybe a guide to tests one can perform to establish what is going wrong and where? --JeremyJones56789 (talk) 11:39, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

We have an article on Alice and Bob. I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "theory"?--agr (talk) 11:53, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Quicker manual one time pad generation

Perhaps you could suggest using a bingo machine for manual generation of a one time pad? Depending on how secure it needs to be (theory, or a guide would be handy) you can rattle balls out at about 11 seconds per character - much faster than dice or scrabble, untouched by human hand, absolutely unambiguous. Can use original numbers with conversion chart or make your own balls out of, eg: FIMO plastic. See mine on my web site, with example set of balls, sample OTP, and stats: [1] --JeremyJones56789 (talk) 11:39, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

A bingo machine as normally used wouldn't be suitable. As I understand how they work, there is a fixed number of marked balls that are extracted one at a time. So if you had, say three of each letter in the ball pool, there could be no more than three consecutive same letters in a string, for example. That is not fully random. You could put each ball back after you recorded it and let them mix, but that would slow things down a lot. Besides, how many people own Bingo machines?--agr (talk) 11:53, 9 January 2008 (UTC)