Talk:Advanced Encryption Standard

The process and the open approach remain important

Noticing that you moved the technical content to block cipher, it still makes sense to have this, perhaps more focused on the process of open review and the alternatives. This sort of thing might be in a more general policy article rather than AES, or AES selection and policy could be a subarticle.

DES selection, of course, was quite different. While it's U.S.-specific, there was a very interesting Congressional oversight response to concerns that NSA had weakened the DES key length, perhaps to give them a back door within their computing power but not of others. An NSA oversight body of the time, the Senate Intelligence Committee, set up a panel of cleared academic experts to deliver a classified report and open recommendations to them. The public report said, apparently accurately, that there was no back door, but carefully said nothing about differential cryptanalysis.

Open review of encryption algorithms, I personally believe, is wise, but I also believe that the Senate action was a prototype for balancing legitimate security needs against legitimate oversight needs. In the present warrantless interception matter, it does not appear Congress has gotten adequate briefings, and/or has been allowed to have independent experts evaluate not the legalities, but the probability of the program obtaining useful information at the cost of privacy. Howard C. Berkowitz 15:33, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

There are some, currently red, links to AES contest in things I've written. Text that could start it is in block cipher, intro to "AES generation". AHS contest with H = hash has deadline for first submissions oct 31 2008; enough details for an article should be out soon. Sandy Harris 00:13, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Sounds good, Sandy. Unfortunately, it's not uncommon to have a lot of interdependent computers articles, which take a while to come together. We are all going to have different styles of creating the set, and it's wise not to commit to approval until the titles shake out. For example, I was able to shake out Domain Name System as a high-level article that I'm hoping to get approved, but there are a sheaf of subordinate articles both under it (e.g., DNSSEC and DNS dynamic update), plus things that intertwine with it, such as IPv6 operations with DHCPv6 and SLAAC, and use of DNS as a general PKI and as the limited PKI for DNSSEC. I hope you can help with the PKI material. It's cheered me somewhat, in looking at DNSSEC and thinking it's chaotic, to have talked to some developers who assure me it is chaotic and not really ready for prime time.

I fully expect you're going to have text moving around for a while; I hope I can help by suggesting relationships. Howard C. Berkowitz 00:28, 28 October 2008 (UTC)