[813] in Cypherpunks

home help back first fref pref prev next nref lref last post

Re: snake oil

daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Marc Horowitz)
Thu Jun 3 19:11:24 1993

To: Nickey MacDonald <i6t4@jupiter.sun.csd.unb.ca>
Cc: cypherpunks list <cypherpunks@toad.com>
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 03 Jun 1993 19:08:45 -0300."
Date: Thu, 03 Jun 1993 18:52:56 -0400
From: Marc Horowitz <marc@GZA.COM>

>> If I just dreamed up a new gee whiz "new" cypher, should I post it to the
>> list for comments, or is this frowned on?  (As it happens, I happen to
>> have what I **think** is a new approach to cyphering, and the answer to this
>> question will determine wheter anyone hears about it or not...)

This list is, IMHO, for the discussion of privacy enforced by
technology in the hands of the user..  New approaches (like remailers
or money algorithms) are within the domain of this group.  New
encryption algorithms are better discussed in the newsgroup sci.crypt.

I admit that I'm a bit skeptical.  So far, every new encryption scheme
someone has proposed here has either been trivially defeated, or done
before.  I'm tired of showing how most schemes are reducible to a
one-time pad or codebook :-)

In any case, I think there are more experienced cryptographers on
sci.crypt than on this list, but I could be wrong.

		Marc

home help back first fref pref prev next nref lref last post