Re: Misty???

17 Dec 2003

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In <v03102801b0ec9df81dd5@[207.167.93.63]>, on 01/22/98 
   at 02:00 AM, Tim May <tcmay@got.net> said:
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At 9:08 PM -0800 1/21/98, William H. Geiger III wrote:
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Well on another mailing list I have been chastised for calling Misty
"snake-oil".
Has anyone actually examined this algorithm? Seems there is an IETF Draft
on it (draft-ohta-misty1desc-00.txt).
Any opinions on it?? My only exposure has be through the pidgon-english
posts of Nobuki Nakatuji (if it looks like a duck, it smells like a duck,
it quacks like a duck ....).
...
I wouldn't call Misty "snake oil." But it's also been thoroughly taken
apart and shown to be weak. Importantly, it was submitted by Mitsubishi
for peer review.
...
"Snake oil" is a name I reserve for, well, snake oil. Some of the recent
nonsense we've seen is more snake oilish than Misty was.
...
Of course, there should be no real interest in Misty anymore, except as
an example to study, so anyone trying to promote it might be accused of
peddling snake oil.
Someone on the OpenPGP list was asking for an asignment for an algorithm
id in the OpenPGP RFC for Misty1 (from Japan whoda thought <g>). I made my
post about snake-oil and got chastised by hal@pgp.com as he seems to think
it's a respectable algorithm:
...
...
Misty is described in the proceedings of the most recent annual
conference on fast encryption algorithms.  It is designed to be provably
resistant to linear and differential cryptanalysis.  As a new set of
algorithms (a few variants exist under the "Misty" label), it is one of
many where a "wait and see" attitude is appropriate to see how it holds
up.  As a patented algorithm, it may have trouble competing with
alternatives that are free of restrictions.
However your charge that it is "snake-oil" seems unfounded.  It appears
to be a respectable academic development effort, within the mainstream
of cryptographic research, and has some reasonable-looking theory behind
it. As far as I know there has been no cryptanalysis or technical
commentary of any sort regarding Misty on the cypherpunks mailing list.
...
As for Nobuki-san's consistently strange posts, I'm now persuaded he may
be a troller. Or just not very bright.
I wonder if something isn't getting lost in the translation. He most
definatly has not mastered the English language. I remember when I first
was learning Hebrew and the number of faux pas I made. :)

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William H. Geiger III  http://users.invweb.net/~whgiii
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