Wikipedia:WikiProject Cryptography/February 2005

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This is a quick summary of what's been happening to crypto-related articles this month (February 2005). For the gory details, you can review the changes here. If I've missed any big edits (I'm sure I have), please feel free to update this summary page. This month, we've had a large influx of images, most concerning historical cryptography. Many non-Wikipedians have kindly given permission to license their photographs of cipher machines under the GFDL, and we've also had several PD images on various historical topics uploaded. — Matt Crypto 11:10, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] New articles

User:Decrypt3 authored an article on the RSA problem.

An anonymous contributor provided new articles on two stream cipher designs: MUGI and MULTI-S01.

User:Mouser has contributed three articles on some classical ciphers, together with their inventor: Four-square cipher, Two-square cipher and Felix Delastelle.

Two stubs have been created for crypto-people: one for Edward Travis, the second director of Bletchley Park. The other was for a more modern cryptographer, Professor Bart Preneel. A new stub on Banburismus, the Bletchley Park technique for breaking Naval Enigma, has been started. Another anonymous contributor began twin articles on two US cryptologic organisations, the Army's Signals Intelligence Service and the Navy's OP-20-G.

User:Matt Crypto has contributed articles on three obscure cipher devices: C-52, CD-57 and HC-9

[edit] Project

In a Slashdot discussion on the continuing debate over the merits of Wikipedia as an encyclopedia, the following comment was posted:

The modern Brittanica is both huge and for many purposes useless. If you want detailed information on a topic like cryptography you will find maybe a short article on RSA in Brittanica but unlikely to find out very much. Wikipedia on the other hand has extensive in depth coverage of far more obscure points. — [1]

[edit] Article improvements

A new navigation box for stream ciphers has been rolled out, originally contributed by an anonymous editor: Template:Stream ciphers.

User:Logologist has been working on bringing Wikipedia's coverage of Enigma history articles up to scratch, particularly the articles on Marian Rejewski and Ultra.

On 16 February, Bruce Schneier reported a break into SHA-1 by Chinese researchers Xiaoyun Wang, Yiqun Lisa Yin, and Hongbo Yu. Wikipedia response was rapid, updating the article an hour after Schneier's posted his blog entry. Wikipedia articles were referenced several times in the subsequent Slashdot story [2].

Password has undergone a major rewrite and expansion, much of which was undertaken by User:ArnoldReinhold. This month, the article grew from 2500 words to 3200.

Similarly, Cryptographically strong and Electronic signature was expanded and rewritten by User:Ww.

The "Key Exchange" section of Quantum cryptography has been rewritten by an anonymous user.

User:Matt Crypto adapted a public-domain NSA article to expand the Wikipedia treatment of US cryptanalyst Solomon Kullback, and also performed a revision of Pretty Good Privacy.

[edit] Discussions

A discussion about bias in Digital Rights Management has arisen: Talk:Digital rights management#Bias Throughout Article.

[edit] New participants

User:Ral315 announced himself as interested in the Cryptography WikiProject, and gave an invitation to take part in a Maths WikiPortal:

"I'm an amateur mathematician, freshman in college, and creator of the Math WikiPortal. Check it out sometime!"

[edit] WikiReader Cryptography

The project to build a WikiReader in Cryptography has carried on quietly this month. A request for Peer Review was lodged at Wikipedia:Peer Review. In response, User:Taxman suggested that the final formatting included clear separation for each article (unlike the current mockup) and commented:

"...Otherwise it is looking good overall and is making progress. Thanks for all of your work."

[edit] Images created by Wikipedians

User:ArnoldReinhold took this photograph of a range of CryptoCard security tokens:

Image:SecurityTokens.CryptoCard.agr.jpg — Security token

[edit] Images found by Wikipedians

User:Emax has found several images of Polish cryptologists who broke Enigma:

Image:Marian Rejewski.jpg — Marian Rejewski
Image:Dyplom Rejewskiego.jpg — Marian Rejewski
Image:Jerzy Rozycki.jpg — Jerzy Rozycki
Image:Henryk Zygalski.jpg — Henryk Zygalski
Image:Henryk Zygalski2.jpg — Henryk Zygalski

User:Matt Crypto located thumbnails of two US cryptographers:

Image:Mauborgne.jpg — Joseph Mauborgne
Image:Solomon-kullback.jpg — Solomon Kullback

User:Securiger provided a copy of a forged postscript to Mary, Queen of Scots' letter to Anthony Babington:

Image:Babington postscript.jpg — Babington plot

[edit] Images licensed under the GFDL for Wikipedia

This month we've managed to negotiate a number of images to be used within Wikipedia thanks to the kind courtesy of a number of non-Wikipedians who granted permission to use their photographs under the terms of the GFDL (the basic license Wikipedia uses):

Bob Lord: