] Steganography, and whether or not terrorists are using it:
] http://elonka.com/steganography/

Bruce Schneier has included the URL for Elonka's talk in the latest issue of the Crypto-Gram newsletter.

PhreakNIC hits the big time! Maybe you can get Schneier to show up next year and give a keynote speech.

Also, this URL should be updated to include a link to MemeStreams.

Counterpane: Crypto-Gram: December 15, 2002

We examine a primality testing algorithm and show that this test is stronger than some of the most popular tests. From this, we show the correctness of the algorithm based on a widely believed conjecture. We also show that any n which is accepted by the algorithm must be an odd square-free number. Thus, it is arguably the simplest and yet the strongest test for primality.

The full report is available in PostScript.

Towards a deterministic polynomial-time Primality Test

Bell Labs' Carl Pomerance: "This algorithm is beautiful."

New Method Said to Solve Key Problem in Math

In this paper, we describe the design and implementation of an anonymous credential system based on the protocols developed by earlier work. We demonstrate the use of a prototype in Java and discuss some deployment issues.

Design and Implementation of the Idemix Anonymous Credential System

It is the most romantic story in American cryptology. To keep the Japanese from getting American secrets in World War II, Navajos -- among the original Americans -- spoke over the radio in their native tongue.

In a sidebar to the movie review for "Windtalkers", David Kahn, author of the crypto classic _The Codebreakers_, retells the true story of Marine Corps codetalkers in World War II.

When Navajos Fought Japanese for Ne-He-Mah

"Cryptography could give us data privacy today. Only no one's asking for it."

Xerox PARC scientist Tom Berson laments the current state of the research community in cryptography. He seems to oversimplify things a bit, though. I can't wait for Bruce Schneier to dig into this. The article wraps up with gems like this:

"When enough of us understand how easy it is to make truly secure systems, and refuse to buy anything that offers us less, we will give companies the economic incentive they currently lack." (emphasis added)

Cryptographic Abundance | MIT Technology Review, Jan/Feb 2002

CryptoHeaven ... accelerates wide spread use of ... cryptography ... without restrictions. ... CryptoHeaven is a user-friendly, no-compromise information-heaven crypto system. ... Information is stored in encrypted form on the server as generated by the client, and only the sender and the recipient possess the keys to gain access to the information. ... We use ... AES ... Rijndael cipher, ... public-key cryptography, ... and SHA-256 ...

CryptoHeaven Secure Free Email, Online Storage, File Sharing

Abstract: "Building on a richer conception of authentication than has been used to date, a statement of requirements is expressed for public key infrastructure (PKI) to support e-business. Inadequacies inherent in conventional PKI are underlined, providing important reasons for its continued low take-up rates. Alternative approaches to electronic authentication are evaluated against the requirements."

Contents:
* 1. Introduction
* 2. The New Model of Authentication
* 3. What Public Key Technologies Do, and Don't Do
* 4. Requirements of an Effective PKI
* 5. Conventional PKI
* 6. Alternative Approaches to PKI
* 7. Conclusions
* Appendix 1: Elements of a PKI to Support Digital Signatures
* References

Roger Clarke's 'Re-Invention of PKI'

"A new watermarking technology could help track down people who make copies of copyrighted digital material. The technique works by concealing information about the identity of the offender inside the copy, according to the company developing the technique."

The upshot: UK company Amino Communications has commercialized a watermarking system with reasonably effective traitor tracing. But Microsoft's Fabien Petitolas (author of a good Artech House book on stego/watermarking) warns, "So far nobody has come up with schemes that are really robust to attacks."

Tracing technology could catch digital pirates

"We consider distributed (threshold) cryptosystems over a composite modulus N in which the factors of N are shared among the participants as the secret key. This is a new idea for threshold cryptosystems based on a composite (i.e., different from the typical treatment of the much-studied RSA-based threshold systems where a "decryption exponent" is shared among the participants). The paradigm enables solutions to open problems in threshold cryptography and it also yields substantial efficiency improvements when generation of N is done in a distributed manner (i.e., without a trusted dealer)."

Threshold Cryptosystems Based on Factoring