From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,FREEMAIL_FROM autolearn=unavailable autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Received: by 10.182.168.42 with SMTP id zt10mr5574659obb.9.1418976427571; Fri, 19 Dec 2014 00:07:07 -0800 (PST) X-Received: by 10.140.22.48 with SMTP id 45mr44478qgm.5.1418976427545; Fri, 19 Dec 2014 00:07:07 -0800 (PST) Path: eternal-september.org!reader01.eternal-september.org!reader02.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!mx02.eternal-september.org!feeder.eternal-september.org!news.glorb.com!h15no25792497igd.0!news-out.google.com!r1ni70qat.1!nntp.google.com!i13no543619qae.0!postnews.google.com!glegroupsg2000goo.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: Fri, 19 Dec 2014 00:07:07 -0800 (PST) In-Reply-To: Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: glegroupsg2000goo.googlegroups.com; posting-host=197.86.177.177; posting-account=r0RePAgAAABkc8iAou09Mtfbf-fnKQql NNTP-Posting-Host: 197.86.177.177 References: <1a2fea61-bcc1-43a9-b6e3-edf474308402@googlegroups.com> <021184f0-18ef-40bc-ba62-fd307998fe1c@googlegroups.com> <793614d3-4219-4cca-9078-24a5d50c6ef5@googlegroups.com> User-Agent: G2/1.0 MIME-Version: 1.0 Message-ID: <5e9d51ac-915f-4d71-bd59-b2863511f056@googlegroups.com> Subject: Re: Ada Connections to this Crypto. From: MM Injection-Date: Fri, 19 Dec 2014 08:07:07 +0000 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Xref: news.eternal-september.org comp.lang.ada:24131 Date: 2014-12-19T00:07:07-08:00 List-Id: On Friday, 19 December 2014 01:25:36 UTC+2, Denis McMahon wrote: > What adjudicating team do you need? The fact that the plaintext can be > created from the ciphertext is sufficient to prove the brute force attack. Not to O'Byrne it isn't. > Publishing the plaintext (or a link to it) here here would be proof of > the success of the bruteforce attack. So you'd think. > To put it another way, if all you supply me with is the ciphertext and I > can publish the plaintext, then obviously the cipher has failed! Not the way O'Byrne plays the game. A year or two back, a challenge was to break a ciphertext given that "two small integers"[*] were sufficient to provide the security. He cheated by not sticking to the game plan. His previously cleartext "scrambling parameters", Which were supposed to be cleartext knowledge, suddenly became secret, and he changed them surreptitiously. He therefore created a cipher text that his "Bob" couldn't read, and for which my brute-force program needed rewriting. I looked at how to do this, and while I didn't complete the job, I saw that his ciphertext, when plotted as a graph, leaked those parameters heavily, thus offering a clear attack. I demonstrated my program on his example plaintext/ciphertext examples, where it did not need his "small integers" to decrypt, and did this by brute force. He made some cockamamy excuse about "needing to protect his cipher", showing that he had no clue about how such challenges work. He ignored the fact that my brute-force program could break his example ciphertexts in seconds. A previous challenge with his other cipher solicited a similar /post hoc/ excuse for that cipher's failure. I didn't see much point in continuing, at that point. If he wasn't going to display any integrity, then the game was over. This is why he needs an adjudicator, and this is why the challenge reward needs to be in escrow and substantial. M [*] "Two small integers" turned out to be "three small integers", but he kept referring to two numbers, not three. You may have noticed in his writing that he doesn't often make a lot of sense. If you could be bothered to compare his verbal description his cipher with the Ada code, its clear he is very confused about a lot of things.