Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Cryptography

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Elliptic curve Diffie–Hellman

I've just moved Elliptic Curve Diffie-Hellman (with the incorrectly capitalized "C" and the hyphen where an endash should be) to Elliptic curve Diffie–Hellman. I've fixed the double redirects. Could others help fix the other redirects?

How did so many links get made to such a conspicuously incorrect title? Do people who work on cryptography articles generally disregard Wikipedia's conventions—even simple and basic ones like these? Michael Hardy (talk) 14:06, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

....and now I've spent a lot of time moving incorrectly titled cryptography articles. And fixing section headings in which Every Word Began With A Capital Letter. And fixing the resulting double redirects and bypassing some of the unprintable redirects to incorrect titles. The vast number of such links and the partial cleanups I've done in the past half-hour make it clear that civilized people will have to send missionaries to this WikiProject to inform its participants that WP:MOS and WP:MOSMATH and the like exist. Michael Hardy (talk) 14:25, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

....sigh....... I guess the fact that this WikiProject hardly exists won't make this easier either. Michael Hardy (talk) 14:26, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

+100 points for doing wiki cleanup. -100 points for pompously lecturing no-one in particular over picayune violations of the manual of style. You may find your exhortations more effective if you refrain from treating fellow editors as wayward children. — Matt Crypto 17:49, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Part of that was directed at me it appears. Thank you Michael for making these changes and for your comments, I'll try to keep them in mind in the future. Cheers. Skippydo (talk) 02:55, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

Michael Hardy: Oh the rantings of the very young. :))

The convention to use endashes in article titles is brand new, up until recently Wikipedia used hyphens in article names. Most of these crypto articles were created years ago. And most of them use the naming that is established practice in the crypto literature.

That these articles are old is a good thing, we crypto editors were working hard and made many articles early in the history of Wikipedia. And this WikiProject was early on one of the bigger and more active projects. This project has become somewhat sleepy since it is hard to find more subjects to write about in cryptography, we already cover the area so well. Just doing maintenance and reverting edits by less knowledgeable editors is no fun in the long run, so many of our editors have gone to greener pastures.

Oh, and cryptography is not the same thing as math, all though maths people tend to believe so. Which usually becomes very funny (or very sad if you will) when maths people try to build "secure" systems...

--David Göthberg (talk) 05:08, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

Data encryption standard FAR

I have nominated Data Encryption Standard for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Tom B (talk) 22:08, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

NSA Encryption Systems

The NSA Encryption Systems page has red/black reversed, at least according to the Red/Black Concepts page. Red is supposed to mean unencrypted and black means encrypted. Think Red means Danger and Black is like Men In Black :) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.44.28.147 (talk) 21:52, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Book:Encryption

I feel the title is not the best one for this book (although I'm not entirely sure what exactly the book is about). Could someone give it a look? Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 21:56, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

Haha, you've come to the right place. I took a look. Well, there are encryption, decryption, hashing, MACing, signing, cryptanalysis and many other related concepts and methods. They all are "cryptography", and that is why this is WikiProject Cryptography. So I suggest that book should be renamed to "Book:Cryptography".

--David Göthberg (talk) 04:36, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

What I'm saying is that book seems to be focused on a subsection of cryptography. So if it's renamed Book:Cryptography, it should probably be expanded. If not, then it should probably be renamed to something more focused (like Book:DVD encryption algorithms, or whatever makes sense). Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 05:11, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

It's not much of a book, since it only has four articles. But anyway: Two of those articles are about hashing so just calling it "encryption algorithms" wouldn't work that well, and it has no article specific to DVD encryption so I don't know why you suggest using "DVD" in the title. But yeah, since it is a very basic collection of articles, then using the generic name "Book:Cryptography" would be bad, since that would block that name for better collections. How about calling it "Book:Crypto introduction". Of course, if it were a real introduction it should contain the Cryptography article. But shouldn't you ask the user that created that book to choose the new name?

--David Göthberg (talk) 07:09, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

The user is inactive (last thing he did was create the book). My suggestion was an example of a more speciffic name, I know nothing of encryption (hence why I said "or whatever makes sense"). There's the 'Standard 4' subtitle, do you know what that refers to? Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 08:09, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

The "Standard 4" subtitle almost certainly refers to the four articles in that book. Three of them are very much the three basic areas in cryptography. While the article Hash function is not, it's just an introduction that might be good to read before Cryptographic hash function.

--David Göthberg (talk) 08:50, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

What I mean is if I walk in a cryptography conference and say "the standard four", will people ask "What standard four?" or would they know I'm talking about these four topics? If they would know, then Book:Cryptography: The Standard Four is a good title. If they don't, then it's a bad title. Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 17:11, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

No, they wouldn't know what you meant with that expression.

--David Göthberg (talk) 08:22, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Table of costs of operations in elliptic curves

This article has been proposed for deletion. It may be easy to save. If you are knowledgeable in the field please have a look. -Arb. (talk) 12:49, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

It's no longer prodded. It does need some referencing. There is clearly relevant literature out there - didn't take me long to find some - so if some expert can track down where this data has been gathered from, it would be a great help. Charles Matthews (talk) 19:10, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

FAR

I have nominated OpenBSD for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here.YellowMonkey (vote in the Southern Stars and White Ferns supermodel photo poll) 03:57, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

Split SHA hash functions to SHA-1 and SHA-2

I started a discussion about splitting the current SHA hash functions article in two, at Talk:SHA hash functions#SHA-1 and SHA-2 split. Anyone's input is welcome! -- intgr [talk] 19:27, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

Missing cryptography topics

Can anybody have a look at this list of missing cryptography topics - Skysmith (talk) 12:12, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Weak security categories

WP should have a couple categories to identify weak and broken crypto. I think articles such as WEP, Crypt_(Unix), md5, Enigma and Cryptoloop should be in something like Category:Broken cryptography for algorithms and software that have serious design or implementation flaws (not of the rubber-hose cryptanalysis type). I think articles such as Adobe Flash, and Little Snitch should be in something like Category:Insecurely distributed software for software distributed only via insecure methods, such as over ftp or http, without PKI-based signatures or securely distributed secure checksums, or without tamper-resistant retail packaging. (The related Category:Securely distributed software is probably also appropriate, e.g. for software like LastPass and the Linux Kernel; the latter get credit for defense in depth; the stuff is served over https, and is PGP-signed.) Thought I'd post here for any feedback before getting started on making it so; we could mention this at Wikipedia talk:Categorization. Notes: These would NOT be for indicating software with remedied or un- remedied exploits. Besides, those are too transient to be practical (unless the flaws go uncorrected for a long time), or too unimportant to be encyclopedic. (Categories need parents; will need to take care of that.... Oh, Category:Broken cryptography algorithms ∃. ) --Elvey (talk) 04:27, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

I have a question. Would articles placed in either Category:Broken cryptography or Category:Insecurely distributed software unequivocally belong in those categories? I.e. would there be reliable sources that presented unambiguous conditions for labeling a piece of software as one or the other? Also, if this requirement is met I would expect to find these matters discussed in sections of some of our existing categories or even in dedicated articles. __meco (talk) 07:57, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

I'm also concerned about verifiability. It's hard to track category usage (you can't watch a category for added articles), so people will slap them on articles based on personal belief, not verifiable sources. There's also no way to add a citation for a category.

Also note that these days, almost everyone recognizes "crypt (Unix)" to be the shadow password hashing technique, which is still secure today. The "crypt" encryption command was never present on modern unices. So the article should be split first, but I'm not sure that the encryption program can even pass notability. -- intgr [talk] 08:31, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

I don't know that it's a useful idea. We already have Category:Broken block ciphers, and any published certificational weakness is enough to put an algorithm there. Ntsimp (talk) 14:55, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the comments. I see that WEP and md5 are appropriately categorized now. Certainly, membership in Category:Securely distributed software is readily verifiable; the source is considered reliable for such info, as a company is considered a reliable source for its financials and such. Membership in Category:Insecurely distributed software often can't be firmly established; I'll search further to see if I can find an RS I haven't heard of. I disagree; crypt is several things, it's common to have it refer to any of an insecure encryption system, an insecure password hashing system, a secure encryption system, or a secure password hashing system.

Fix SHA-2 page

[Discussion moved to Talk:SHA-2 -- intgr [talk] 17:28, 6 January 2011 (UTC)]

Cryptography FAR

I have nominated Cryptography for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here.Smallman12q (talk) 14:15, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

U.S. Lifted Export Restrictions.

U.S. Government article lifting export restrictions on strong cryptographic software. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 146.127.253.12 (talk) 22:54, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Ricky McCormick murder notes

I have started an article on the Ricky McCormick murder notes for which the FBI just asked for public help in decoding. --agr (talk) 22:45, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

CopyVio suspect

There's a CopyVio discussion [[1]] about a steganalysis diagram. Interested users may consider reading the nomination page and the related article Blackvisionit (talk) 18:54, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

Secret Key Generation Via Wireless Channel Characterization

Could use some more eyes on it. I know very little about this field but at a glance this looks like it may include WP:OR. Beeblebrox (talk) 17:02, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

Making binary human-readable/pronounceable for cryptographic, similar purposes

Hi. In the course of considering the Bubble Babble article, we/I came to the realization that it might be useful to merge it and some other articles on algorithms into one article on transforming binary into something human-readable/pronounceable, either via generating pseudowords/logatomes (like Bubble Babble) or into series of actual words (like the PGP word list, Diceware, and S/KEY). Any thoughts? What other algorithms exist and should be in such an article? What's the proper name for such an article? Thanks very much! Allens (talk) 01:02, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

Template:WikiProject Cryptography and assessments

Any particular reason why Template:WikiProject Cryptography does not support assessments? --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me} 02:53, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

No, I think the template was just never updated when assessment grades were introduced. Can you do that? It would be great if the template could be extended to support assessments, I just never got to check what needs to be done to support it. Nageh (talk) 17:08, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

I cannot, but if you ask on WP:VPT, I am sure somebody will help you out. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me} 22:29, 9 February 2012 (UTC)