🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <n0e07t@ofa123.fidonet.org>, Erik.Lindano@ofa123.fidonet.org writes:
|>  The most peculiar thing about your rejection, and that of the other
|>  person who replied, is that both of you are rejecting the challenge
|>  _without having ever seen the product you are rejecting!_.  This 
|>  worries me immensely.  Makes me wonder if you may not simply be 
|>  avoiding the challenge under some pretenses.  Am I mistaken?
|>  
|>  In my experience in the technical world, I've found that prouncing 
|>  some idea to be unworthy _ex cathedra_ gathers applause only among 
|>  the NIH (Not-Invented-Here) crowd.  The rest of the world sees only 
|>  their arbitrary pronouncement, and doesn't give much credit to the
|>  rejecter(s). 
|>  
|>  But if all these experts are unwilling to even _try_... hmmmm.

I think you are discounting time value here.  The cryptologists who
hang out here are probably not terribly interested in carrying out even
a known plaintext attack on something encrypted with an unknown
algorithm -- they just don't have the time to waste.  They would much
rather look at and analyze the algorithm in order to assess its
characteristics (security, speed, patent infringement, etc.).

To assert a NIH attitude is absurd, given that there is no _here_
here.  The problem is that neophytes show up with "unbreakable" code
challenges in sci.crypt on a regular basis (about every other month, or
so).  Nobody has the time to reverse engineer an algorithm starting
from square one -- it is a long, tedious process, the first time
'round, unless the code is ridiculously trivial.

If your friend is truly interested in having experts assess the
security of this algorithm, s/he must submit the _algorithm_ to the
experts -- not the _output_ of the algorithm.
-- 

...Russ Schnapp
BIX: rschnapp           Email: uunet!metaflow!rschnapp or rschnapp@metaflow.com
Metaflow Technologies   Voice: 619/452-6608x230;  FAX: 619/452-0401
La Jolla, California    Unless otw specified, I`m speaking only for myself!