Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Cryptography/Archive 1

message: The first comment on the project's talk page. Wow!
I suggest that public key cryptography and asymmetric key algorithm are sufficiently distinct topics that a merge would be ill advised. In use, the first encompasses such things as PKI, digital signature, and so on. The second is a class of crypto primitives. Whether pkc should have acquired its rather sloppy penumbra of meanings is another point altogether. Hacker has been similarly abused, as has strong and weak crypto. But we're stuck with the way the language gets used, however unfortunate. Thoughts anyone? ww 21:29, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Merge [[Public key cryptography]] and [[Asymmetric key algorithm]]?

message: Well, it's clear that in a few months I won't be able to edit anything since I'm falling farther and farther behind regarding the adminstrative structure / tools / scheme we are developing. Matt is to be congratulated on this (much of it is his work), but I will clearly be roadkill quite shortly. Ah well... Anyway, the point of this note is to note a note left at mode of operation which notes that it really shouldn't be in the algorithm category but rather in the (and I am shocked to discover a contribution that even I can make to the structure) the newly discovered to be non-existent protocols category. Please note that those who understand this stuff (not me, I'm finding Roger Bacon more and more a soul mate!) might consider creating one. 
Please. It's rather a significant missing bit after all. And our protocol coverage is, now that's it's been forcibly called to my attention, not what might be called complete. Since this is perhaps the most obscure and trickiest of the technical side of modern crypto (save perhaps on the innards of block cypher operation, or maybe random number generator testing) I'm going to leave protocol content to those with more facility, myself. (--> retreating so yellow streak is plainly visible...) ww 18:23, 22 Jun 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: protocols category

message: I have a little problem with the block cipher template. In Safari, on a 1024x768 screen, it is too wide for the screen, making the sideways scroll bar appear. It's just a minor annoyance, but one thing I learned from web design classes is "never make the viewer scroll sideways". I can see how to fix it, if nobody objects: one just has to remove the margins by removing the "style" parameter from "{| id="toc" style="margin: 0 2em 0 2em;"". Is this OK? Decrypt3 15:37, Jul 1, 2004 (UTC)
: Sounds good to me; "be bold" (and all that)! (The scrollbar doesn't appear on Mozilla, just for information). — Matt 15:50, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Block cipher template 

message: A recent Slashdot article has been posted regarding the proposed withdrawl of FIPS 46-3 (the standard specifying DES) . The news item itself links to AES, and in several comments there's various links to Wikipedia articles, including DES (naturally), Differential cryptanalysis, One time pad, Quantum cryptography, 3DES and Diffie-Hellman. I know it's only Slashdot, but it's nice to know that people are reading this stuff sometimes ;-) — Matt 20:02, 29 Jul 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Matt, I too am cheered by this news. I'm not alone anymore! Bless you Friday! (Or at least not alone except for Matt, anymore.) ww 15:16, 30 Jul 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Slashdot comments awash with Wikipedia links

message: User:Raul654 dropped me a note wondering of WikiProject Cryptography could hack together a World War II cryptography article for use in Wikipedia:World War II wikireader. I think this would be a good article to have anyway:
 
Matt -- I have a request for your wiki-project. Rather than including seperate articles on Ultra and Purple, I'd much rather have a general article on World War II Cryptography. Do you think you or your project could provide one in the next month or two? →Raul654 05:12, Aug 7, 2004 (UTC)
:Matt, It sounds quite attractive, and I'd be in favor of such an idea myself, but I think such an article will pose sufficient problems as to be impractical. 
:In the past, several articles have tried to take a 'larger context' viewpoint, at least as from a non-crypto perspective. There has been considerable objection (in the form of progressive edits) to reduce such attempts and concentrate crypto articles on specific crypto topics, not a larger perspective. In addition, the two cases cited -- Purple (ie, Magic) and Ultra -- are not really parallel, given the differences between the cypher side (German v Japan) and the cryptanalytic side (US (with the competing girls' schools) and UK (with an integrated effort centered at BP). Not to speak of the difference in coverage between assorted Engimas and Purple (one was military, expionage, strategic, tactical, ...), the other was diplomatic traffic alone.
:I'd like such an article, agree with Raul64 that it would be useful to Readers (at least some), but don't think it will be possible. Not a happy evaluation, I'm afraid. ww 14:25, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[World War II cryptography]] 

message: I notice we have a list of books on crypto, but I don't see any list of journals for current crypto research.  I would create one, but I wonder if perhaps we should move "books on cryptography" to "publications on cryptography" and then we can include journals as well instead of creating two separate yet related lists.  Headings could possibly include:
#Conference proceedings and associated publications (e.g. Advances in Cryptology for the annual Crypto conference)
#Journals dedicated to crypto (e.g. Journal of Cryptology)
#Journals dedicated to other subjects that have papers on crypto (e.g. IEEE Transactions on Computers)
#Online repositories (e.g. eprint.iacr.org)
What do you all think?  CryptoDerk 20:31, Oct 21, 2004 (UTC)
:Also, I guess it would be prudent to include standards documents (e.g. IEEE 1363 , the standard for public key crypto, if I remember correctly).  CryptoDerk 23:39, Oct 21, 2004 (UTC)
:: This sounds like a good idea to me. The actual history of "Publications in cryptography" is an interesting story by itself, of course, given how reluctant the spooks were to allow open study of  cryptography. For standards, I think we already have Cryptography standards, so maybe we could just link there for that? — Matt 17:35, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: List of crypto publications

message: A book cipher appears in the new movie, National Treasure ("Ottendorf cipher"). The key is Benjamin Franklin's Silence Dogood letters. In case it attracts people's attention, we may want to flesh out that article a bit. (The movie also features invisible inks, though oddly uses lemon juice the developer). Securiger 19:45, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  National Treasure 

message: I dug up some pictures from Crypto 2k3 and added pictures to the Adi Shamir article and the CRYPTO article.  I have a picture of Whitfield Diffie, but we already have a picture in that article that's under a suitable license (CC 2.0).  I have a couple more pictures, one of Jean-Jacques Quisquater and one of Matt Franklin, although we don't currently have articles on them.  You can see all the pictures here (there are some other pictures there not related to crypto).  Let me know if you want me to upload the Diffie, Quisquater, or Franklin pictures.
:Quisquater (I hope that's easier to type in French!) was a member of the Nessie team and certainly is important cryptogrpahically enough to justify a WP article. Please, create a stub and include the picture if it has appropriate permissions. And add it to the list of cryptographers list. And so on for others... 
:I have observed that people (including myself) are less inhibited about editing an existing article than creating a new one. Which may be why the list of articles needed is so long and not melting as rapidly as some glaciers. ww 18:32, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Pictures

message: I hope nobody minds if I plug another wiki: Cryptotourism, a project to collect information about crypto-history sightseeing, like Bletchley Park or the National Cryptologic Museum. It's in very early stages at the moment, but if anyone is interested in chipping in, it would be most welcome. — Matt Crypto 16:17, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Cryptotourism

message: Hi! I've created a summary of the activity within the Project this month. I find it quite difficult to keep track of major changes to articles: the big things tend to get lost within small changes. Thanks to everyone for their contributions! — Matt Crypto 11:32, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Same deal this month! See: Wikipedia:WikiProject Cryptography/March 2005. — Matt Crypto 16:54, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Cryptography/February 2005]]

message: I can't resist fads, and WikiPortals appear to be the latest WikiFad. Accordingly, I've hacked up Wikipedia:Wikiportal/Cryptography for a bit of fun. — Matt Crypto 15:30, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Portal!

message: I've nominated Caesar cipher as a Featured Article candidate. See Featured article candidates/Caesar cipher. — Matt Crypto 09:33, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Caesar cipher as a Featured Article candidate

message: Why is completeness listed under boolean functions and S-boxes? What I understand by completeness is: "requiring no further assumptions", as in oblivious transfer is a complete primitive for secure multiparty computation. Is there a totally unrelated sense of the word within cryptography?! Arvindn 02:59, 23 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, in S-box design, it's a desireable property of Boolean functions; it means that each output bit depends on all the input bits, and not just a subset . — Matt Crypto 09:44, 29 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Completeness

message: The deletion of this article is currently being discussed at Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Bit streams cryptology. Uncle G 04:09:08, 2005-07-29 (UTC)
: See also: Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Decryption matrix. — Matt Crypto 09:34, 29 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Bit streams cryptology]] 

message: 2005-10-03 I would like to get started contruibuting to wikipedia. I want to start with the todo.
# Images:   Diagrams explaining public key cryptography
Please give me a hint of what type of diagram I could make. Also, is this the appropriate place to be posting questions?
You can reach me at wikipedia.org (a t) phor.net
: Thanks for wanting to help out! There are several places to ask questions. If you're wanting to ask general questions about Wikipedia, then you can use the Wikipedia:Help desk (or you can ask me on my talk page, I'd be glad to help). If you're wanting to ask a general question about some non-Wikipedia topic, then you can post it on the Wikipedia:Reference desk. If you're wanting to discuss general topics about cryptography articles on Wikipedia, this is a good page for it.
: It's great that you're interested in illustrating public key cryptography. You might take the approach of the "postal analogy"; see Public_key_cryptography#A_postal_analogy. A while ago, User:Wapcaplet made a few bits and pieces of crypto "clipart" for use in such diagrams. Check out :Image:Crypto_clipart2.png and :Image:Cryptography clipart1.png. I also hacked together a mock-up of a diagram for Diffie-Hellman key exchange using some of the clipart in this diagram: :Image:Dh-mockup.png (clearly I have no artistic talent!). One image off the Internet which we might use for inspiration (although we can't copy it outright) is:  (symmetric crypto, we could adapt for the postal analogy). — Matt Crypto 18:15, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Getting started 

message: There's a discussion on Wikipedia's crypto articles, and/or a Crypto wiki on the Cryptography mailing list: http://www.mail-archive.com/cryptography%40metzdowd.com/msg05367.html 
— Matt Crypto 15:03, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Crypto wiki/Wikipedia discussion on cryptography mailing list 

message: I was thinking it would be nice to have a page that gives short informal definition on the main terms in cryptography (e.g. Asymmetric key, receiver anonymity, sender anonymity, etc.), something like Glossary of graph theory but much shorter and more informal.  Are there any thoughts as to if this would be useful?
Batman900 23:52, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Go for it, sounds as if it could be quite useful. — Matt Crypto 00:44, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Thoughts on a short definition page 

message: I've nominated the article on Polish codebreaker Marian Rejewski on Featured Article Candidates. Please add any comments/criticism/review to Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Marian Rejewski. — Matt Crypto 00:44, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Marian Rejewski on FAC 

message: (Apologies for treating this page as a reference desk.) Does anyone know, if I upload a key to a public keyserver (e.g. http://pgp.mit.edu/), roughly how long it would take to propagate to other keyservers? Thanks Dmharvey 02:16, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  question about public keyservers