To stimulate research into Twofish, the designers are putting their money where their mathematics is. They are offering $10,000 in prize money for the best attack on Twofish during the first round of the AES evaluation. This contest is very different from most other cryptanalysis contests. There is no ciphertext to decrypt, and no key to find. Instead, the $8,000 first prize will be awarded to the person or group (other than the Twofish design team) that publishes the best cryptanalysis of Twofish. The runner up will get a $2,000 second prize. To qualify the cryptanalysis has to contain a significant new result not published earlier by the Twofish team. If no new results are published, the prizes will not be awarded. The deadline of the contest is NIST's deadline for first-round AES comments; the result should be presented in a format compatible with the NIST requirements for first-round comments. Decisions of the judges (the Twofish design team) are final. Good luck, Bruce ********************************************************************** Bruce Schneier, President, Counterpane Systems Phone: 612-823-1098 101 E Minnehaha Parkway, Minneapolis, MN 55419 Fax: 612-823-1590 Free crypto newsletter. See: http://www.counterpane.com