Schneier on Bernstein factoring machine (fwd)
-- Forwarded message -- Date: Tue, 16 Apr 2002 20:44:06 +0200 (CEST) From: Anonymous [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Schneier on Bernstein factoring machine Bruce Schneier writes in the April 15, 2002, CRYPTO-GRAM, http://www.counterpane.com/crypto-gram-0204.html: But there's no reason to panic, or to dump existing systems. I don't think Bernstein's announcement has changed anything. Businesses today could reasonably be content with their 1024-bit keys, and military institutions and those paranoid enough to fear from them should have upgraded years ago. To me, the big news in Lucky Green's announcement is not that he believes that Bernstein's research is sufficiently worrisome as to warrant revoking his 1024-bit keys; it's that, in 2002, he still has 1024-bit keys to revoke. Does anyone else notice the contradiction in these two paragraphs? First Bruce says that businesses can reasonably be content with 1024 bit keys, then he appears shocked that Lucky Green still has a 1024 bit key? Why is it so awful for Lucky to still have a key of this size, if 1024 bit keys are good enough to be reasonably content about? - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: How do we trust bits?
On Wed, 10 Apr 2002, Pat Farrell wrote: Alice trusts money because she can get ice cream cones. Incorrect, she trusts money because she knows the vendor trusts the money. Why? Because they are members in a large (reasonably) stable environment with (relatively) low threat percentages. If it's too hairy the ice cream man moves on down the road, and the price of bread is so high that nobody worries about ice cream. Try to buy ice cream in a combat zone. Banks exchange bits thru the ACH networks based on a belief that their exchange is valid. No, they exchange bits based on a very expensive and complicated protocol that has a variety of safe guards built into it. Bits are bits, there is no way to know that the bits are special; yet there is a cultural contract that allows money to move. The medium is -not- the message. There -is- context. What message does a telegraph send if the key isn't struck? Cleary the medium in and of itself can't be the message. What does the message Billy arrived mean, if context isn't important? Does it mean that the killer arrived on time, that your a grandparent, or that your dog just got to the vet? This means that yes, -some- bits -are- more special than others. You and Tim are incorrect in your view. And yes, the question of whether trust (is) -not- transitive is -especially- critical. It is an -emotional- measure of the social stability of the populace at large. If people don't trust they don't -cooperate- and this adds 'friction' to the system. It's sort of like the PVT gas law coupled with materials science (in particular failure mode analysis) with respect to when or if the society will 'pop'. It maps (at least parametrically) to temperature (trust that is). -- The law is applied philosophy and a philosphical system is only as valid as its first principles. James Patrick Kelly - Wildlife [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.ssz.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.open-forge.org
Re: Experiences Deploying a Large Scale Emergent Network (fwd)
-- Forwarded message -- Date: Tue, 09 Apr 2002 06:16:05 -0700 From: Zooko [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: A. Melon [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Experiences Deploying a Large Scale Emergent Network [This is in reply to a message that was sent to me and to [EMAIL PROTECTED] on 2002-03-22. I do not see it on mail-archive.com [1], so if you are interested you might want to view the archive at sf.net/projects/mnet [2].] I'd like to thank A. Melon for criticism of my paper Experiences Deploying a Large-Scale Emergent Network. I've updated the paper in preparation for its inclusion in a printed dead-tree proceedings and attempted to address some of A. Melon's criticisms. In particular, I've tried to be more clear about the magnitude of Mojo Nation's failures by adding the typical and maximum number of simultaneously connected nodes. I've also added some observations about two big mistakes that would be easy to correct, something I understood only after chatting with the researchers at the Peer-to-Peer Workshop. I've also attempted to address A. Melon's other criticism: that it isn't clear which specific issues are most to blame for the overall poor behavior. I've added statements about my belief that the high node churn rate was largely due to the poor data availability and that conversely the poor data availability was partially due to the high node churn rate. I've also added a statement that there are a lot of important aspects of the system as a whole which are omitted from the scope of the paper. (Including agnostically-blindable digital tokens and many other things.) I'd like to thank A. Melon and the participants of the Peer-to-Peer workshop for feedback. Most of all I'd like to thank the architects of Mojo Nation: Jim McCoy and Doug Barnes. Mojo Nation was a brave experiment, and I hope that we will all benefit from the resulting knowledge. Here is the URL for the current version of the paper: http://zooko.com/IPTPS02.ps or http://zooko.com/IPTPS02.pdf Regards, Zooko [1] http://www.mail-archive.com/cryptography@wasabisystems.com/ [2] http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?thread_id=579361forum_id=7702 --- zooko.com Security and Distributed Systems Engineering --- - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Julia Child was a Spook
On Sat, 6 Apr 2002, F. Marc de Piolenc wrote: Nonsense. If you can't see any difference between terrorists and résistants you are either wilfully ignorant or confused. A terrorist strikes symbolic targets, preferably undefended ones. A résistant strikes at the occupying power. Of course it is possible for one and the same person to be both - it is behavior that defines the terrorist. So when an al-Quaida member takes on a US patrol, he may define himself as some kind of soldier in that encounter. It doesn't change the fact of his complicity in the murder of innocents, which makes him a terrorist as well. And who might those symbols be for? The 'occupying power' per chance? -- The law is applied philosophy and a philosphical system is only as valid as its first principles. James Patrick Kelly - Wildlife [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.ssz.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.open-forge.org
1st announcement for ECC 2002 (fwd)
-- Forwarded message -- Date: Fri, 5 Apr 2002 18:47:36 -0500 From: R. A. Hettinga [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Digital Bearer Settlement List [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: 1st announcement for ECC 2002 --- begin forwarded text Status: U Date: Fri, 5 Apr 2002 09:51:45 -0500 To: Frances Hannigan [EMAIL PROTECTED] From: Frances Hannigan [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: 1st announcement for ECC 2002 THE 6TH WORKSHOP ON ELLIPTIC CURVE CRYPTOGRAPHY (ECC 2002) University of Essen, Essen, Waterloo September 23, 24 25 2002 First Announcement April 5, 2002 ECC 2002 is the sixth in a series of annual workshops dedicated to the study of elliptic curve cryptography and related areas. The main themes of ECC 2002 will be: - The discrete logarithm and elliptic curve discrete logarithm problems. - Efficient parameter generation and point counting. - Provably secure cryptographic protocols for encryption, signatures and key agreement. - Efficient software and hardware implementation of elliptic curve cryptosystems. - Deployment of elliptic curve cryptography. It is hoped that the meeting will continue to encourage and stimulate further research on the security and implementation of elliptic curve cryptosystems and related areas, and encourage collaboration between mathematicians, computer scientists and engineers in the academic, industry and government sectors. There will be approximately 15 invited lectures (and no contributed talks), with the remaining time used for informal discussions. There will be both survey lectures as well as lectures on latest research developments. SPONSORS: Alcatel Canada Certicom Corp. CV Cryptovision Metris MITACS Philips Semiconductors Research Alliance Data Security NRW University of Essen University of Waterloo ORGANIZERS: Gerhard Frey (University of Essen) Alfred Menezes (University of Waterloo) Scott Vanstone (University of Waterloo) Annegret Weng (University of Essen) CONFIRMED SPEAKERS: Dan Bleichenbacher (Lucent Technologies, USA) Steven Galbraith (Royal Holloway College, UK) Kiran Kedlaya (University of California, Berkeley, USA) Alan Lauder(Oxford University, UK) Kumar Murty(University of Toronto, Canada) Phong Nguyen (ENS, Paris, France) David Pointcheval (ENS, Paris, France) Takakazu Satoh (Saitama University, Japan) Rene Schoof(University of Rome, Italy) Frederik Vercauteren (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium) LOCAL ARRANGEMENTS: Essen is the largest city in the Ruhr region, and is about a 20-minute drive from Dusseldorf International airport. The second announcement will be made on May 10, and will include registration and local (i.e., hotel transportation) information. If you did not receive this announcement by email and would like to be added to the mailing list for the second announcement, please send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] The announcements are also available from the web sites: www.exp-math.uni-essen.de/~weng/ecc2002.html and www.cacr.math.uwaterloo.ca --- end forwarded text -- - R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/ 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA The IBUC Symposium on Geodesic Capital April 3-4, 2002, The Downtown Harvard Club, Boston mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED] for details... ... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience. -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: My current readings in Category Theory
On Wed, 3 Apr 2002, Sampo Syreeni wrote: The fact that we use Alice and Bob diagrams, with Eve and Vinnie the Verifier and so on, with arrows showing the flow of signatures, or digital money, or receiptswell, this is a hint that the category-theoretic point of view may be extremely useful. (At other levels, it's number theory...the stuff about Euler's totient function and primes and all that. But at another level it's about commutative and transitive mappings, and about _diagrams_.) I don't see the connection. Category theory mostly seems to be about questioning the way we represent and visualize mathematics. There, it is beginning to have some real influence. However, what you're describing above is well below that, in the realm of ordinary sets and functions. I seem to think categories have very little to do with such things. It is about visualizing any sort of relationship, not just mathematics. Category Theory has a lot to say about the 'simplicity' of the cosmos. It also has a lot to say (in a self-referential manner) about the way humans think about thinking. It will, in the long run, be a critical component in developing AI. * the whole ball of wax that is complexity, fractals, chaos, self-organized criticality, artificial life, etc. Tres trendy since around 1985. But not terribly useful, so far. No? I seem to recall a couple of articles on how actual markets behave chaotically, based on time-series data. Such a conclusion is quite a feat, I'd say, and there's bound to be more out there. Besides, I'm not quite sure chaotics hasn't had an impact on e.g. cipher design -- current cipher design seems to concentrate a lot on diffusion, for instance. What is diffusion but a discretized version of a Lyapunov exponent-like characterization of chaotic blow-up? Actualy it's very useful, it even leads into CT if you keep at it. Diffusion may be -fractal-, but that is not the same as -chaotic-. You're confusing the two. Of course. But how is this interesting? I view objects mainly as a logical extension of the analytic method: to-undestand-break-it-down. Not nearly as interesting as blind learning algos or the like. ??? Object oriented programming is about memory and function consolidation. It flows from the management of effects and side-effects, not from any generalization of the analytical process. -- There is less in this than meets the eye. Tellulah Bankhead [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.ssz.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.open-forge.org
