Date: Fri, 4 Jun 1999 00:30:34 +1000 (EST) From: Nicholas Brawn <ncb@zip.com.au> To: Laurence Berland <stuyman@confusion.net> Cc: security@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Not freebsd related...yet Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.05.9906040025370.6446-100000@zipper.zip.com.au> In-Reply-To: <3755D0E4.55677E6@confusion.net>
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On Wed, 2 Jun 1999, 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. I'm building a symmetric algorithm > that is designed to specifically handle large keys ie >1024 bytes. 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. I'm not sure how much reading you've done in the area, but unless there have been some massive developments in the field, a 1024 *symmetric* key is ridiculous. At the very most, a 128 bit key should suffice, but it doesn't hurt to make the key length variable. I recommend you obtain Bruce Schnier's excellent book, Applied Cryptography, and read about some of the design criteria for the top symmetric algorithms in use today. It will give you a good idea of how you should be approaching development of a new cipher. -Nick To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-security" in the body of the message
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