Talk:Cryptanalysis

message: This article seems a bit incoherent. whats this "two-key" stuff? You mean public key / asymmetric cryptography, or what? And "one-key" means what? Symmetric cryptography?
Also, chosen ciphertext and chosen plaintext attacks are different for symmetric crypto. For symmetric crypto, attacks are: ciphertext-only, known-plaintext, chosen-plaintext and chosen-ciphertext (in order of increasing strength.) For assymetric, the three main attacks are: known-plaintext, chosen-ciphertext and adaptive chosen-ciphertext.
This page needs to be rewritten by someone who knows what they are talking about (I know enough to know this page is awful, but I'll leave fixing it to those more knowledgeable than I...) -- SJK
How is it that there's no mention whatsoever of OTPs/perfect ciphers? I didn't have time to review the whole article but just the fact that there's no mention of those is enough to figure that it's quite lacking.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.145.97.79 (talk) 00:04, 6 November 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Article needs work

message: There's some short stub-esque pages on the various types of cryptanalysis attacks: known-plaintext attack, chosen plaintext attack, ciphertext-only attack, chosen ciphertext attack, adaptive chosen ciphertext attack. They are all quite short and similar, and its unlikely they'll every expand into longer articles. Some options:
# Keep the short pages. If this was the case, you'd want to add things like "adaptive chosen plaintext attack" and "related-key attack" and (believe it or not) "related-cipher attack".
# Merge them all into a Scenarios for cryptanalysis article.
# Merge them all into cryptanalysis.
I'd favour doing 2., seeing how long the article is, and then deciding whether to do 3.
Matt 02:59, 13 Mar 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: The modern treatment of this stuff is in terms of the random oracle model.  There should definitely be an article explaining terms like IND-CPA and IND-CCA security (CPA=chosen plaintext attack, CCA=chosen ciphertext attack, etc).  But it shouldn't be in the main cryptanalysis article.  I've been wanting for a while to write something on those topics but I'm too busy right now.  Rogaway and Bellare have an excellent downloadable textbook that I'll try to add a link to. Phr 08:41, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: What do do about cryptanalysis assumptions?

message: Can somebody check the link on "Shannon Information" (the Shannon part)? It used to point to a disambiguation page. I've changed it to what I think is the right person, but I'm not completely sure... Ealex292 02:12, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I've never heard the term "Shannon Information" before, but from context it just means the cryptanalyst has gained information that lowers the effective Shannon entropy of the (unknown) plaintext.  For example, suppose you have a ciphertext and you know that the plaintext was written in either English or French, but you don't know which, and you consider both equally likely.  If you have a statistical method that doesn't yield any plaintext, but can determine from the ciphertext that the plaintext is 65% likely to be English, that would be an information deduction attack.  In general, perfect security means that for a given ciphertext, all plaintexts are equally likely.  Any algorithm that discloses that some plaintexts are more likely than others is an attack.  Phr 08:38, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Shannon link 

message: I see that a large chunk of the article was just removed.  For what reason? — DAGwyn 19:01, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  History of cryptanalysis 

message: I removed a tag pointing to other species signs and signals. This is so wide a divergence in the sense of cryptanalysis as to be out of context entirely. Linguistically embedded mehaphor being not entirely rational, I'd futher observe that this meaning of the term is entirely unknown to me. ww 11:13, 26 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks.  You don't actually have to justify the reversion in the Talk page; Wikipedia editors constantly revert "random" additions that make no sense (in addition to obvious instances of vandalism).  Usually just a brief reason in the "Edit summary" box will suffice. — DAGwyn 05:45, 27 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually, I realize that, but I've never bothered to figure out how to add an edit summary to a 'rollback' action. Usually I don't bother, as I did in this case, to explain further, but there is/was an actual point to the tag, just more than a little off any sensible target. Thus... ww 10:50, 27 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  animal behavorial cryptanalysis 

message: I hope I'm not being to picky, but I question the use of the word "deduce" in the context of cryptanalysis.  It is my experience this is primarily an inductive process based on guesses and experimentation.  There can be very little information at the begining of an attack; certainly not enough to solve the system in the way deduction demands.  The analyst usually looks for possible known algorithms or mathematically simple methods, which is really more of inductive process.  I'd like to see the wording changed so this is more clearly reflected.  I'm not going to change it myself, because I don't feel it is my place.  I just wanted to throw this out to wp community.  —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Mbset (talk • contribs). 
:There are elements of both induction and deduction involved, also plain guesswork (confirmed by results). — DAGwyn 16:20, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  "Deduce" is correct. One has to distinguish between finding an attack against a cryptosystem (i.e., developing an algorithm) and performing the attack (i.e. running the algorithm). While finding the algorithm might be an inductive process, running it is not. The article talks about what the result of the attack is (e.g. key, plaintext etc.). Hence the article is describing what the output of running an algorithm is. 169.231.5.121 07:42, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: If we were to accept that strange model of cryptanalysis, then the "deductive" part would be of little interest anyway. — DAGwyn (talk) 17:37, 14 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Characterisation of attacks (deduction vs induction) 

message: *Bizarrely, the article fails to address the legal aspects of what is essentially codebreaking or cracking the code, which assumingly is illegal (whereas Cryptography#Legal issues involving cryptography has such section). I suppose there have been some international conventions prohibiting this. Back in the Soviet time, the students at the KGB Higher School trained in this, were referred to only as mathematicians, i understand exactly for legal reasons.Muscovite99 (talk) 23:08, 3 January 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: There is no legal standpoint on codebreaking in the UK, and as far as I'm aware there isn't one in the USA either. Legal protection only applies to the data that was encrypted. Obviously if it was government classified or covered by the official/trade secrets acts the unauthorized decryption of such data would be illegal. In most cases it's what you do with the data you get that is covered by law. It is not illegal to break the encryption of an SSL connection, but it is illegal to use someone's bank account details to fraudulently obtain money. However, breaking encryption at work would probably be considered a fireable offence and you wouldn't stand a chance if you tried to take them to court over illegal dismissal. It also may be considered a breach of your ISP's terms and conditions if you try to break encryption of data sent over the internet. 86.14.89.251 (talk) 19:39, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

text: Far from being bizarre, when there is nothing useful to say it is best to say nothing.  In particular we need to be careful not to offer legal advice, since we are not licensed to do so. — DAGwyn (talk) 15:43, 11 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Legal issues

message: The word "cryptosystem" is deprecated as ambiguous according to its article.  In a couple places where we use it, we mean an application of cryptography, in "Types of cryptanalytic attack" we essentially mean a cipher or hash function, and in "Cryptanalysis of asymmetric cryptography" we mean an asymmetric algorithm (we say "cipher" now, but that's not precise for, e.g., Diffie-Hellman).  
Post-quantum cryptography and Quantum computer say more than this article does about the implications of QC for crypto -- improve and link.
There's still only one paragraph here about flaws above the algorithm level (protocol breaks, implementation flaws); that might deserve a short section that links elsewhere.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.7.68.35 (talk) 06:45, 4 April 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: The word "cryptosystem" has not been deprecated. Rather, IETF does discourage its use because, "cryptosystem" does indeed cover a wide range from ciphers to protocols. It is, however, fine to talk about "types of attacks against cryptosystems", since a cryptographic attack can for example exploit a weakness in a cipher (e.g. a differential attack) or exploit a weakness in a cryptographic protocol (e.g. a man-in-the-middle attack) or an implementaion (e.g. timing-attack). Hence in this article it is ok to use a term (cryptosystem) that covers a wide range. The same also holds for the section "cryptanalysis of asymmetric cryptography". Many attacks against asymmetric cryptosystems do not break the "asymmetric algorithm" (e.g. RSA). Rather these attacks exploit the way that the algorithm is used. How many times have we seen newspaper articles claiming that RSA is broken, only to find that some protocol was not using it correctly? 81.62.26.199 (talk) 10:21, 4 April 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Replacing "cryptosystem" with more specific terms, quantum computation, protocol break 

message: User Mesoderm has made a very extensive set of changes to this article in the last two days. These are unlikely to be welcomed by all concerned with it. I am going to restore some of what has been deleted, but wouldn't a pause be appropriate with discussion here as to the philosophy behind the changes. --TedColes (talk) 14:56, 3 April 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Huge changes without discussion 

message: User DAGwyn has improved the wording on the section on 'Depth'. But (s)he has edited out a lot of formatting including that which gives the correct symbol for the "XOR" operator (symbolized by  ⊕  ) on the grounds that "was unreadable (font issue?) on computer I borrowed; reformatted and added somewhat for clarity". As far as I can see, the previous formatting used standard HTML and Wiki markup, so I wonder whether it was a problem with the HTML of the web browser on the borrowed computer. I am reluctant to accept that all such markup should be eliminated – where would it stop? I therefore plan to restore the formatting unless a good argument against doing so is forthcoming. --TedColes (talk) 08:31, 30 April 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: The problem was that the circled-plus symbol (⊕) was appearing as an empty rectangle instead, on the computer at my friend's house.  I don't think you're supposed to embed special HTML symbols in article source text.  Note that in the source text of this message, I inserted the ⊕ character using the "Math and logic" menu from the pull-down list below the "Save page" button, and I suggest that the Wikipedia staff would prefer that that be used.  There is also a "math" tag that may be better to use for equations etc., but I don't recall offhand its name for that symbol.  The current text looks marginally acceptable on my own computer (the character is overly large and bold for the font), but I'm concerned that it might not work at all on many others, unless changed to use another approach (such as I just suggested).  There is also a problem with centering the standalone equations: it becomes hard to read on wide screens.  However, I'll leave it up to others to address. — DAGwyn (talk) 10:38, 30 April 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for this helpful response. --TedColes (talk) 11:24, 30 April 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: And thank you for taking care of this. — DAGwyn (talk) 23:33, 2 May 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Formatting problem 

message: This article is about Cryptanalysis. The Global surveillance template (on the right) was added, which I replaced with a link to the Global surveillance article in the See also section. Whizz40 (talk) 13:33, 12 October 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Global surveillance 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

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message: Anyone wishing to learn how to break ciphers of nearly all kinds should consult:
Helen Fouché Gaines, "Cryptanalysis", 1939, Dover. ISBN 0-486-20097-3
It is especially useful in learning to do simple substitution cryptograms, with many practice examples.  But also contains examples of transposition and more advanced substitution systems.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lucky Vassall (talk • contribs) 19:30, 16 June 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Learning Cryptanalysis 

message: An illustration should reflect the subject. If a picture of a mechanical apparatus is desired, that of the code-breaking Cyclometer might be a better fit than the current one of Enigma device (that did the opposite of the codebreaking). Dimawik (talk) 03:03, 27 June 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Seeing no objections for 4 weeks, I am changing the picture. Dimawik (talk) 16:47, 24 July 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Illustration