Slightly off-topic but definitely interesting. Figured FDE subscribers
would enjoy it.....
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Matt Blaze <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Jan 26, 2007 2:58 PM
Subject: Intuitive cryptography that's also practical and secure.
I was surprised to discover that one of James Randi's "million dollar
paranormal challenges" is protected by a surprisingly weak
(dictionary- based) commitment scheme that is easily reversed and that
suffers from collisions. For details, see my blog entry about it:
http://www.crypto.com/blog/psychic_cryptanalysis/
I had hoped to be able to suggest a better scheme to Randi (e.g., one
based on a published, scrutinized bit commitment protocol).
Unfortunately I don't know of any that meets all his requirements, the
most important (aside from security) being that his audience
(non-cryptographers who believe in magic) be able to understand and
have confidence in it.
It occurs to me that the lack of secure, practical crypto primitives
and protocols that are intuitively clear to ordinary people may be why
cryptography has had so little impact on an even more important
problem than psychic debunking, namely electronic voting. I think
"intuitive cryptography" is a very important open problem for our
field.
-matt
_______________________________________________
FDE mailing list
[email protected]
http://www.xml-dev.com/mailman/listinfo/fde
