[109379] in Cypherpunks
Re: AUCRYPTO: Re: Simplicity
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Mok-Kong Shen)
Mon Mar 22 10:53:41 1999
Date: Mon, 22 Mar 1999 16:39:03 +0100
From: Mok-Kong Shen <mok-kong.shen@stud.uni-muenchen.de>
To: aucrypto@suburbia.net, cypherpunks@cyberpass.net,
bill payne <billp@nmol.com>
Reply-To: Mok-Kong Shen <mok-kong.shen@stud.uni-muenchen.de>
David C. Oshel wrote:
>
> At 19:41 -0700 21/3/99, bill payne wrote:
> >...
> >A good encryption article from an engineering standpoint appeared.
> >
> >http://www.ednmag.com/reg/1999/031899/06df2.cfm
> >
>
> I'm not sure what "cognometrics" means -- Is the author suggesting that
> one should hash a FILE, such as a passport photo, when selecting an
> encryption key? This would have the advantage of precluding a user's
> effective knowledge of technical details of the actual key. If the initial
> file were selected from an album (on a CD, e.g.), then sequential photos
> from the same gallery, or sequential tracks from the same audio CD, etc.,
> could key successive blocks of the plaintext. Exchanging passwords might
> be as simple as mailing a fair copy of a CD, or discussing a particular
> track from a popular music album.
If I understand the original text correctly, the author is referring
to a system in which the user is presented with a number of different
human faces and his choice of these leads to a password. Quite a time
ago someone mentioned this in one of the discussion groups, saying
however that he did not further persue the idea because he discovered
that IBM has a patent that is phrased so broad as to cover that
as a particular case.
Incidentally, I had an idea somewhat analogous to that of yours in
attempting to untilize dititalized materials to generate keystreams.
See sec. II of
http://www.stud.uni-muenchen.de/~mok-kong.shen/#paper18
M. K. Shen
