[43233] in Cypherpunks
Re: coding and nnet's
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Timothy C. May)
Fri Nov 10 20:06:52 1995
Date: Fri, 10 Nov 1995 18:14:09 -0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
From: tcmay@got.net (Timothy C. May)
At 7:52 PM 11/10/95, Bill Stewart wrote:
>Schneier's 2nd edition says "Neural nets aren't terribly useful for
>cryptography,
>primarily because of the shape of the solution space. Neural nets work
>best for
>problems that have a continuity of solutions, some better than others.
>This allows a neural net to learn, proposing better and better solutions as
>it does.
>Breaking an algorithm provides for very little in the way of learning
>opportunities:
>You either recover the key or you don't. (At least this is true if the
>algorithm is
>any good.) Neural nets work well in structured environments when there is
>something
>to learn, but not in the high-entropy, seemingly random world of cryptography."
>And he doesn't give any references.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
This paragraph sounds a _lot_ like what I wrote in sci.crypt a while back
on the usefullness of AI and neural nets for crypto. Sounds almost like
exactly the paragraph I wrote, in fact.
And I recollect that Bruce dropped me a note saying I made the point
succinctly and that he wanted to use what I said in his next edition. (My
recollection at least, but I don't have any easy way anymore of searching
my several hundred megs of accumulated mail, articles, etc.)
I have no problem with Bruce using my points. I hope he didn't use my
_exact_ words, though. But not a cosmic issue.
--Tim May
Views here are not the views of my Internet Service Provider or Government.
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
tcmay@got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
Higher Power: 2^756839 | black markets, collapse of governments.
"National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."
