Re: A is for ...

The speech was about cryptography, thus forming a possible link between
sci.crypt the silly alphabet game that Peter was posting about. I
can't say exactly why *he* posted that question to sci.crypt.

It's a good speech, though. It contains a particularly eloquent
description of Kerkhoff's Principle:
"So what they do is to make most of the cipher standardised, and to
concentrate the non-standardization into one part called the key.

So far so good. But of course the key, the non-standardised part, must
be nonstandard in only standardised ways. And also key management must
conform to certain standards. In other words standards are being
formulated whereby the nonstandard parts, which must conform to certain
standards of non-standardization are also to be handled only in a
standardised nonstandard way in order to standardise on the overall
non-standardization.

I hope this makes the position clear."

And on weak keys:
"Perhaps it would be a better idea if we looked for strong keys. In
fact why not look for THE STRONGEST POSSIBLE KEY. Then we could all
standardise on it."
Received on Thu Sep 29 21:43:25 2005