From owner-freebsd-security Thu Jun 3 7:30:49 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-security@freebsd.org Received: from zip.com.au (zipper.zip.com.au [203.12.97.1]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id CD782152A3 for ; Thu, 3 Jun 1999 07:30:45 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from ncb@zip.com.au) Received: from localhost (ncb@localhost) by zip.com.au (8.9.1/8.9.1) with ESMTP id AAA09543; Fri, 4 Jun 1999 00:30:35 +1000 Date: Fri, 4 Jun 1999 00:30:34 +1000 (EST) From: Nicholas Brawn To: Laurence Berland Cc: security@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Not freebsd related...yet In-Reply-To: <3755D0E4.55677E6@confusion.net> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-security@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org On Wed, 2 Jun 1999, Laurence Berland wrote: > I'm writing a new encryption algorithm for my computer science final > project. Although it doesnt need to be particularly great I'm thinking > there's no reason it's gotta be bad. I'm building a symmetric algorithm > that is designed to specifically handle large keys ie >1024 bytes. If > anyone has any hints or suggestions, I'm open to them...in fact that's > why I'm writing this in the first place. If it works well, maybe > someday people will actually use it, then again maybe not. thanks for > your time. I'm not sure how much reading you've done in the area, but unless there have been some massive developments in the field, a 1024 *symmetric* key is ridiculous. At the very most, a 128 bit key should suffice, but it doesn't hurt to make the key length variable. I recommend you obtain Bruce Schnier's excellent book, Applied Cryptography, and read about some of the design criteria for the top symmetric algorithms in use today. It will give you a good idea of how you should be approaching development of a new cipher. -Nick To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-security" in the body of the message