User:Sandy Harris

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Hourglass drawing.svg Where Sandy lives it is approximately: 15:09

I'm a baby-boomer Canadian currently working in China. My academic qualifications are a BA in Psychology and a Certificate in Teaching English as a Second Language, both from Carleton U in Ottawa. I also did some work toward an M Phil in computational linguistics at U of Birmingham, UK, but did not complete that degree.

I am quite active on Wikitravel, where I'm an admin, and sometimes contribute to other wikis. See my Wikitravel user page: [1].

I've spent two substantial chunks of my career as a teacher — 1978-83 and 2002-10 — mainly because that is a good way to support travel. At other times I've worked in computing, mostly as a technical writer but a bit of everything else too.

I'm interested in computer security and cryptography. I think my paper on combining stream ciphers and block ciphers is fairly interesting.

My Erdos number is five, via Carlisle Adams, Michael Wiener and Ron Rivest.

I wrote most of the documentation for the FreeS/WAN project, a Linux implementation of the IPsec encryption protocols. I have permission to re-use that text here User_talk:Sandy_Harris/Permission.

My articles

For quite a few Citizendium articles, I am the main or only writer to date.

General

  • Developing Article Block cipher: A symmetric cipher that operates on fixed-size blocks of plaintext, giving a block of ciphertext for each [e]
  • Developing Article Stream cipher: A cipher that encrypts data by mixing it with the output of a pseudorandom number generator controlled by a key; to decrypt, run the same generator with the same key to get the same pseudorandom data, then reverse the mixing step. [e]
  • Approved Article Kerckhoffs' Principle: The principle, formulated by Auguste Kerckhoffs, that security in a cipher should not depend on keeping the details of the cipher secret; it should depend only on keeping the key secret. [e]
  • Cypherpunk: Add brief definition or description
  • Stub FreeSWAN: A Linux implementation of the IPsec protocols, intended to make wholesale monitoring of the Internet impossible. [e]
  • Stub Hash (cryptography): An algorithm that produces a fixed-size digest from an input of essentially arbitrary size. [e]
  • Developed Article AES competition: A competition run by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology to chose a block cipher to become the Advanced Encryption Standard. [e]
  • Developed Article RSA algorithm: A widely used public key encryption algorithm whose strength depends on the difficulty of integer factorisation. [e]
  • Developing Article Diffie-Hellman: A technique that allows two parties to safely establish a shared secret for use as a cryptographic key, even if someone is eavesdropping on their interaction. It requires that the parties have some means of authentication to be sure they are talking to the right person. [e]
  • Stub Digital signature: A technique based on public key cryptography to allow people to "sign" documents using their private keys. [e]
  • Stub Hybrid cryptosystem: A system that combines public key with secret key methods; usually with a cryptographic hash for authentication as well. [e]
  • Developing Article Alice and Bob: Traditional names for A and B, the two players, in discussion of cryptography or coding theory. [e]

Attacks

  • Developing Article Active attack: An attack on a communications system in which the attacker creates, alters, replaces, re-routes or blocks messages; this contrasts with a passive attack in which he only reads them. [e]
  • Developing Article Passive attack: An attack on a communications system in which the attacker reads messages he is not supposed to but does not alter them. [e]
  • Developing Article Brute force attack: An attempt to break a cipher by trying all possible keys; long enough keys make this impractical. [e]
  • Stub Algebraic attack: Attacking a cipher by writing equations that describe its operation, then solving for the key. [e]
  • Developing Article Code book attack: Attacking a block cipher by creating a code book, collecting plaintext/ciphertext pairs. [e]
  • Stub Birthday attack: An attack on a cryptographic system that works by finding two identical outputs from the system. [e]
  • Developing Article Meet-in-the-middle attack: An attack on a block cipher in which the attacker can calculate possible values of the same intermediate variable (the middle) in two independent ways, starting either from the input of the cipher (plaintext) or from the output ( ciphertext); he calculates some possible values each way and compares the results. [e]
  • Developing Article Man-in-the-middle attack: An attack on a communications system in which the attacker deceives the communicating parties so they both talk to him while believing they are talking to each other. [e]
  • Stub Dictionary attack: Attacking a password system by encrypting an entire dictionary and then checking if any stored passwords match [e]
  • Traffic analysis: Add brief definition or description

Ciphers

Many of these are only stubs.

  • Developed Article CAST (cipher): A general procedure for constructing a family of block ciphers. [e]
  • Stub Rivest ciphers: A set of symmetric-key encryption algorithms invented by Ron Rivest. [e]
  • Stub International Data Encryption Algorithm: A block cipher designed by James Massey and Xuejia Lai in 1991, intended as a replacement for the Data Encryption Standard. [e]
  • Stub Serpent (cipher): A block cipher which was a finalist in the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) contest, designed by Ross Anderson, Eli Biham, and Lars Knudsen. [e]
  • Developing Article Blowfish (cipher): A block cipher, designed in 1993 by Bruce Schneier and included in a large number of cipher suites and encryption products. [e]
  • Stub MARS (cipher): A block cipher that was IBM's submission to the Advanced Encryption Standard process. [e]
  • Developing Article Twofish (cipher): A bock cipher from Schneier and others that was a finalist in the AES competition. [e]
  • Stub GOST cipher: A Soviet and Russian government standard symmetric key block cipher; also based on this block cipher is the GOST hash function. [e]
  • Stub Skipjack (cipher): A block cipher developed by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA); initially classified, it was originally intended for use in the controversial Clipper chip. [e]
  • Stub LOKI (cipher): Block ciphers (LOKI89 and LOKI91) designed as possible replacements for the Data Encryption Standard (DES). [e]
  • Stub SAFER (cipher): A family of block ciphers designed primarily by James Massey (one of the designers of IDEA) on behalf of Cylink Corporation. [e]
  • Stub De-correlated Fast Cipher: A block cipher which was created in 1998 by a group of researchers from École Normale Supérieure, CNRS, and France Télécom, and submitted to the AES competition. [e]
  • Stub Tiny Encryption Algorithm: A block cipher notable for its simplicity of description and implementation (typically a few lines of code), designed by David Wheeler and Roger Needham. [e]
  • Stub Hasty Pudding (cipher): A variable-block-size block cipher designed by Richard Schroeppel, which has its input block size and key length variable, and an input parameter called the 'spice'. [e]
  • Stub DEAL (cipher): A block cipher derived from the Data Encryption Standard (DES), from a design proposed in a report by Lars Knudsen in 1998. [e]
  • Stub E2 (cipher): A block cipher which was created in 1998 by NTT and submitted to the AES competition. [e]
  • Stub Camellia (cipher): A block cipher developed jointly by Mitsubishi and NTT in 2000, which has similar design elements to earlier block ciphers MISTY1 and E2. [e]
  • Stub CRYPTON (cipher): A block cipher efficient in hardware implementations, designed by Chae Hoon Lim of Future Systems Inc. [e]
  • Stub MAGENTA (cipher): A block cipher developed by Michael Jacobson Jr. and Klaus Huber for Deutsche Telekom. [e]
  • Stub SEED (cipher): A block cipher developed by the Korean Information Security Agency, used broadly throughout South Korean industry, but seldom found elsewhere. [e]
  • Stub FROG (cipher): A block cipher authored by Georgoudis, Leroux and Chaves, which can work with any block size between 8 and 128 bytes, and supports key sizes between 5 and 125 bytes. [e]
  • Stub Triple DES: The common name for the Triple Data Encryption Algorithm (TDEA) block cipher, named because it applies the Data Encryption Standard (DES) cipher algorithm three times to each data block. [e]

Others

Others I have contributed substantially to:

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