From owner-freebsd-security Thu Jun 3 1:46:15 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-security@freebsd.org Received: from schuimpje.snt.utwente.nl (schuimpje.snt.utwente.nl [130.89.238.4]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id BBE68150D3 for ; Thu, 3 Jun 1999 01:46:13 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from jeroen@vangelderen.org) Received: from wit395301.student.utwente.nl ([130.89.235.121]:25094 "EHLO vangelderen.org" ident: "NO-IDENT-SERVICE[2]") by schuimpje.snt.utwente.nl with ESMTP id <8052-12447>; Thu, 3 Jun 1999 10:45:57 +0200 Message-ID: <375640B1.B901E581@vangelderen.org> Date: Thu, 03 Jun 1999 10:45:37 +0200 From: "Jeroen C. van Gelderen" X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.51 [en] (Win98; U) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Laurence Berland Cc: security@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Not freebsd related...yet References: <3755D0E4.55677E6@confusion.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-security@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Laurence Berland wrote: > I'm writing a new encryption algorithm for my computer science > final project. Although it doesnt need to be particularly great > I'm thinking there's no reason it's gotta be bad. No offense, but the fact that you think this sort of implies that it *will* be bad. Is there any reason for you to invent another (probably insecure) algorithm instead of picking one from the collection of existing, secure ciphers? > I'm building a symmetric algorithm that is designed to > specifically handle large keys ie >1024 bytes. Any reason as to why you accept such long keys? The DES successor (AES) will take 256 bits maximum and the cryptographic community considers this sufficient. > If anyone has any hints or suggestions, I'm open to them...in > fact that's why I'm writing this in the first place. If it > works well, maybe someday people will actually use it, then > again maybe not. thanks for your time. For starters, read Bruce Schneier's "Applied Cryptography", 2nd Edition. Read it completely. Read "Cryptography, Theory and Practice" by Douglas Stinson and the "Handbook of Applied Cryptography" by Menezes et al. Have a look at the appropriate newsgroups and pay attention to what happens to new algorithms. Cheers, Jeroen -- Jeroen C. van Gelderen - jeroen@vangelderen.org - 0xC33EDFDE To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-security" in the body of the message