Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Cryptography

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[edit] Articles for the Wikipedia 1.0 project

The Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team is looking to identify quality articles in Wikipedia for future publication on CD or paper. They recently began assessing using these criteria, and are looking for A-class, B-class, and Good articles, with no POV or copyright problems. We have six featured articles, iirc: Caesar cipher, Data Encryption Standard, Enigma machine, Marian Rejewski, ROT13 (doh!) and Voynich Manuscript. What other high-quality crypto articles do we have? — Matt Crypto 18:16, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Matt, The Reader project articles have had a considerable amount of effort given to them and quite a few of those ought to qualify. Perhaps several of the cryptiacs could get together and jointly vote on classifying these (and others) according to these criteria? I suspect that comment from non-cryptiacs won't be adequate to evaluate the crypto technical side of such articles. On the writing side, of course, it seems there is never an end.
Mailings to those who've signed up at the Project as members? Is there a way to do this other than manually? ww 00:06, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
Thanks a lot, it looks like you made the contacts for us! That's a good set of FAs to start with. If you want to put together a list, you could consider a worklist as several other WikiProjects have- they are a good way to track articles and encourage improvements. In the meantime, please feel free to add/edit our listing (once I get time to include it) in our table here. Thanks, Walkerma 05:38, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
  • Please enter some information for the beginners on this page:Elementary Cryptography

[edit] 1,000 articles

As of yesterday, I believe we now have over 1,000 articles on cryptography listed in list of cryptography topics. The English Wikipedia itself is rapidly approaching 1,000,000 articles (998,475 now). Of course, quantity isn't a substitute for quality...— Matt Crypto 09:06, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Yay! We are 1 percent! Still, I bet we have better average quality in our articles than average wikipedia articles anyway.  :Mangojuice 06:09, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
Yay! We are 1 permille! And that is a LOT for a wikiproject as ours with such a small number of editors. I guess the hero of the day is Matt Crypto who seems to have made most of those articles. So Matt, bask in the glory of the day! --David Göthberg 23:44, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
I'm sure that I can't have created more than 30-50 of those articles, so I really can't take the glory, I'm afraid! — Matt Crypto 11:27, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
Matt certainly does deserve much credit for his work in the crypto corner. Much of the crypto editing support stucture is of his design and implementation, he has consistently patrolled all the articles I look at with an eye for non-WP surplusage, and done so over an extended period.
As one who has been plugging away in the crypto corner for now (acckkk!) 5 years more or less, I think he deserves three cheers from those of us who still haven't figured out the WP scaffolding behind the curtains. A good job, mc, and I endorse dg's comment. ww 12:03, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

I dont understand why this huge project does not involve anything for the beginners!!! I am sure that many beginners surely refer to wikipedia... and what they would have found is nothing but codes and algorithms that are totally beyond their reach!! Please help the Newbies. This is a humble request

Because Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, and thus striving for precise and factual information; Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information (a book, a collection of tutorials, manuals, FAQs or guides). Anyone is, of course, welcome to write an introductory book about cryptography on Wikibooks and refer to it on Wikipedia (from relevant articles). However, that's out Wikipedia's scope. -- intgr 13:10, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss the "humble request". Obviously much of cryptography is highly technical, but I think there is room to make basic articles more accessible.--agr 14:15, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
I might have been overly critical since I assumed that a request for "something for the beginners" implied practical cryptography. That is, practical "howto"s or guides, which I can't see fitting into an encyclopedia. As for accessibility, I agree. Every article on Wikipedia has room for improvement, and articles about cryptography in particular tend to be quite technical. -- intgr 14:29, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
Actually guys, I think I disagree. There are several articles, albeit mostly on what we call classical crypto, which are suited to beginners. I know I've been tugging in the direction of accessible by the Average Reader in the crypto corner the entire time I've been here, and though I often seel like Sisyphysis (sp?), there are probably some other folks who have been doing so as well. Try Cryptography, History of Cryptography, Substitution cipher, polyapphabetic cipher, and so on. All that said, I tend to agree with Intgr above about how-tos being not good WP fodder. ww 22:32, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Simple cryptography

Could someone put the most basic of stubs on the Simple cryptography page and remove the {{inuse}} tag. The tag was not intended to be the only content for a page while someone got around to writing it. Thanks, Ansell 10:13, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

I have no idea what an article on Simple Cryptography would be about.. perhaps Classical cryptography? Anyway, I've put a speedy tag there, there's no content on that page. Theeditor1, the only editor of it, is a new editor who had some difficulty understanding ownership of articles at first, which may explain this. I left him a message. Mangojuice 12:09, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

-- I'm new to this as well and can't find a page on Simple Cryptography. My interest is in historical ciphers, some of which are not too simple.

When Mangojuice suggests a possible general title Classical cryptography, what period should it cover? Antiquity to the 1920s? --Steve 12:36, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Mangojuice & Stevebkk, Here on WP, the term Classical Cryptography was first used in some major edits by Matt_Crypto to Cryptography. The article had been arranged, conceptually, to sketch the historical development as an aid to understanding the in the Average Reader. MC' motive for excising a good bit of hte history was, as nearly as I understand, that much of that history was now irrelevant. There was some disagreement at the time, but little willingness to reverse the bulk of his changes and so they have more or less remained. His term for pre-1976 crypto, and certainly for pre-Machine Age crypto was meant to make this distinction and to reduce space allocated to such crypto (outside explicitly historical articles), thus concentrating available space on crypto of current interest.
I agree that 'simple cryptography' is inappropriate for some pre-WWII crypto, and would favor removal of the implied categorization. I think the intent, however, was to contrast with modern practise which is, effectively, so un-simple as to require high capacity electronic asistance.
I remain, as one whose intent here is the plight of the average Reader, not entirely tranquil with the state of things, but unwilling to insist on my position without indication of more widely shared disquiet.
Either or both of you may have views on this which suggest that revisiting that structuring might be appropriate.
Does this cover the ground (and figure too) adequately? ww 01:42, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
pre-1976 crypto? I stop in 1918 when the subject was still in the hands of linguists and not mathematicians.

--Steve 10:27, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Guys, this isn't really relevant anymore. Simple cryptography was deleted as being devoid of content about 2 months ago. Currently we have Cryptography and History of cryptography for this kind of thing, and possibly some other article I'm not as aware of. Mangojuicetalk 18:45, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] All reference material to be deleted from Wikisource

I would like to alert this community to the fact that Wikisource has decided to delete all reference data, some of which is of interest to this project. This raises the question of whether some of this material should be hosted at Wikipedia. See [[1]] for a list. There aren't that many of them and I think they have value here. Articles to be deleted include some Elliptic curve algorithms, test vectors for Blowfish and RC4, and Diceware word lists in English and German. I have a personal interest in the last two (I am the compiler of the English list) so it would be best for me to stay out of that discussion.--agr 15:30, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

AR, I've reviewed the discussion which resulted in the exclusion policy under which these articles are being deleted. Twice. And i find myself lost. If the FIPS Pubs related to crypto are included I can't see the problem. They are public domain, important to public policy (at least in aggregate) and some of them are very important (eg the DES and AES standards). I think the decision to exclude maths got out of hand. I didn't see that policy defended in the discussion, and the summary voted upon (or its interpretation a few commments later) seems to have gone awry. Very odd. Should one protest at WS? Should one just transfer the material (much of which is gone when I looked) to WP? Extremely odd. When I end up in this lost condition, I usually find there's an internally contradictory situation. And I think the same has happened here, the contradction being between a remit to include Sources and some hostility to complex stuff (like math and its typography). ww 08:31, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
I'm not happy with the situation, but the editors who maintain Wikisource have decided to delete reference material that was previously considered part of the Wikisource mission. Their best argument is that they do not feel competent to maintain material that isn't essentially a book. That said, FIPS PUBS would appear fall under what is still allowed, as I understand things. Were there FIPS PUBS on Wikisource before? If so, do you know happen their title?--agr 11:35, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
Yes any transcriptions of a publication (with acceptable license of course) are still allowed. The data listed for exclusion had no such sources listed. I believe it was user compiled. If it was a publication however I would be happy to restore it. There are links to lists of what was deleted in the Scriptorium disscussion. There may be red links to things that were not necessarily deleted, as no one ever cleaned up the index pages on many of these topics after the language split. I am not sure that that situation necessarily applies to cryptograpy though. Any titles you are unsure of I can examine for deleted edits.--Birgitte§β ʈ Talk 11:46, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Would the http://cryptodox.com/ be an appropriate place for such cryptography-related things that are apparently unwanted elsewhere? --70.189.73.224 15:55, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Crypto navigation boxes (templates)

I took the liberty to slightly change the layout of our navigation boxes. I moved the "edit button" on them from the top center position to the top right corner instead. I tried the layout on some people and they prefered that. I hope you guys like it too. You can see the boxes on the bottom of our main project page. --David Göthberg 22:32, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

I like it. Cheers! — Matt Crypto 15:58, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

I noticed that Authenticated encryption and all its modes kind of need a navigation box. But I thought it preferably could be added to an existing navigation box. Since it is both about block cipher modes and MAC modes it kind of fits in both the "Block ciphers" box and in the "Cryptographic hash functions and Message authentication codes (MACs)" box. Since the block cipher box already is very big and more is about ciphers than modes and the MAC box is much smaller and do list MAC modes I think Authenticated encryption best fit there. So I will add it there. --David Göthberg 11:36, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Project internal categories and our userbox

I just discovered that other projects use categories for their project internal pages and for their templates. So I created two new categories and added all our project pages and all our templates to them: Category:WikiProject Cryptography and Category:WikiProject Cryptography templates. (I added all I could find. There are probably more hidden somewhere.) --David Göthberg 02:53, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

I also made it so that users of our project userbox {{User WikiProject Cryptography}} are automatically included in the Category:WikiProject Cryptography members. --David Göthberg 15:39, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

A minor point occurs to me in connection with your innovation. There has been a convention that new participants are added to the list at the end. This loses alphabetic ordering, but it's a small list... Does your clever change follow this convention? ww 22:53, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
Well, the userbox does NOT add people to the participants list on the Wikipedia:WikiProject Cryptography page. Instead it adds them to the Category:WikiProject Cryptography members which is an automatic category page. And category pages automatically sort items in alphabetic order.
I made that extension to the userbox mostly for fun. I noticed that many of our participants were using the userbox so I thought it would be neat to use that to automatically categorise them. (And no, it is not my invention, I have seen other projects doing it.) However I added a twist to the code so that only when the userbox is added to a user page does that page get listed in the category. So if the userbox is placed on other pages (such as on our project page that informs about it) then those pages do not get listed in that category. Our userbox are used on a whole bunch of other pages and that was cluttering the list on the category page.
--David Göthberg 23:40, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
DG, sorry about the confusion. I was understanding something rather different than was actually meant. Oops. ww 15:07, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
On suggestion from Mike Selinker I moved Category:WikiProject Cryptography members to Category:WikiProject Cryptography participants and updated our userbox and other pages accordingly. It seems to be a more consistent naming with other projects and with that we ourself used the title "Participants" on the section of our project page already before I made the category. --David Göthberg 16:38, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] High quality

Just dropping by here to note that I'm impressed by the high quality I almost invariably encounter when stumbling across cryptography-related articles in Wikipedia. Kudos to all contributors. Is there still active work on the cryptography WikiReader? Fredrik Johansson 10:15, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Slashdot on CryptoDox

http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/09/17/1522236 — Matt Crypto 07:39, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Thoughts on possible additions

I do not feel competent enough to add much to the crypto pages, although if basic stubs are fine, then I guess I'm as competent as any to do that. Anyways, these are the things I've noticed when browsing around:

1) The crypto modes page lacks many of the modes listed on the [NIST] website for modes under evaluation. There are a LOT, and they're divided into multiple categories, which would imply the crypto mode page would need to reflect those categories somehow, if some/all of these were to be added.

2) [eCrypt] seems to list some cryptographic functions not mentioned elsewhere.

3) The Hashing Function lounge certainly lists a whole host of hashes that range from the normal to the obscure (hashing with fast fourier transforms?) to the totally bizare (and what do you do with the cellular automata?). At the very least, the hashing pages here should have a section on the role of mad scientists in hashing.

4) The alternative asymmetric cipher page seemed to miss a few options. [HFE], [TTM], [GPT]. Some of these are broken, but establish a clearer picture of what people have tried and why certain approaches just don't seem to work.

5) Although I saw some stuff on IPSec, I didn't see a mention of Sun's SK/IP protocol, which (as best as I can recall) was intended to be better than IPSec on recovery over unreliable connections.

6) There were a few other ciphers which seemed to be missing. For example, although SEAL was listed, I did not see an entry for FEAL on the block cipher page. (Although it does have its own page.) I didn't see Rainbow listed at all, though I may have just missed it. (Addendum: Ok, this point is probably not valid, as noted by Matt Crypto. However, I will now obsess over the next week or so on finding general categories of block ciphers not covered.)

7) References! More references and external sites need to be given on those pages with limited content. [Hyperelliptic Curve Cryptography] is one for, well, the hyperelliptic curve cryptography page. It links to many more. Personally, I'd cite the lot rather than cite just one and let others dig through. There's only one interesting new paper on [Torus-based encryption], but it looks like a good study of the original case and lists some practical improvements to the method. There is also a [study comparing CEILIDH and XTR] (two torus-based asymmetrical crypto systems) which would be worth adding as a reference.

8) There is no 8. That way, I can index my suggestions in a single digit of octal.

--70.103.67.194 19:09, 18 September 2006

Thanks for the feedback. To address point 6, few specific designs are mentioned on block cipher (although a lot are indexed in the navigation block at the bottom -- including FEAL). That's probably OK, as we're only really interested in generalities at that sort of level. — Matt Crypto 20:29, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
Hi, who ever you are. You really should consider to log in and sign your comments. Any way, I think I happened to address point 1 when I added a section I called "Other modes and other cryptographic primitives" to the Block cipher modes of operation article. I had been thinking of adding that for some time now and actually did not read your comments until after I did that addition. :)
--David Göthberg 00:19, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Cryptography Portal box

Cryptography Portal

I have noticed that lately Frap has been adding a "Cryptography portal" box to a lot of crypto articles. See for instance the "See also" section of the RSA article.

However he used the generic "portal template" for that box and I did not like the image size and layout it caused. So I made a dedicated template for the box instead. Thus we can discuss and change the design in that template and it will then look the same on all pages where it is used.

The box you see to the top right of this message is the new dedicated one. Here is a link to it if you want to look at its code or edit it: {{Cryptography portal}}

Another issue is in what articles to place the box? Frap seems to put it in all kinds of crypto articles. Perhaps it should be in all articles, or perhaps just in the "main" articles?

Yet another issue is where in the articles to place the box. The normal place for portal boxes is in the "See also" section just like in the RSA article. However some articles do not have any "See also" section and Frap then placed the box in the top of the article. See for instance the RC4 article. Perhaps the box should then better be placed in an empty "See also" section?

So the three questions I have are:

  • How should the box look?
  • In what articles should it be used?
  • And where in the articles should we put it?

--David Göthberg 17:09, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I noticed that the image isn't aligned so good. I saw the portal link in some article, and decided to put it in other articles related to cryptography. I tried put it on pretty much every article so that people easier can find the portal. I placed it under the "See also" section for articles that had such a section, as that is the place that I deemed made the most sense. Not all articles had an "See also" section, so I put it elsewhere, mostly at the top. -- Frap 18:08, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
Hi again Frap! I have done some thinking and experimenting and I think I now have at least come to a conclusion what I myself want to answer to my own three questions:
  • I am now happy with the design of the portal box. I hope the rest of you like it too. (But feel free to edit it more if you want, this is a wiki...)
  • I think we can put the portal box in pretty much any/all crypto articles if we like too. Although I think that portal first perhaps should be expanded with more stuff. I myself am not a fan of portals and think that the cryptography page is a better starting point than the portal for a new user. So personally I think it is more important to link to that main article somewhere in each crypto article. For instance by using this as the first sentence on crypto pages: "In cryptography, salt is/means ...". (But note, I have nothing against portals, I just don't use them myself.)
  • I think that normally the portal box should be placed in the top of the "See also" section of articles. But when there is no such section I do NOT think it should be put in the top of the article, instead in the "External links" section. And in worst case in whater is the last section such as the "References" section. If there is no last section (other than normal article text sections) an empty "See also" section could be added like this:
    == See also ==
    {{Cryptography portal}}
    <!-- Add "see also" items here. -->
    <br clear=all>
That "<br clear=all>" tag makes it so that any other things that comes below it (such as "Crypto stub" or navigation boxes etc) doesn't end up in weird places. It also makes it possible to add an empty "See also" section before other sections if you like, without the box interacting weirdly with the next section header.
Sorry for being pedantic about this portal box but since it is going to be added to a lot of articles I think it is worth some discussion.
--David Göthberg 16:18, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
A note to every one. I now think we have a better solution than using this "portal box". I think we instead should use the "generic crypto navigation box" which is discussed and shown in the next section below. --David Göthberg 01:55, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Generic crypto navigation box

Note, the boxes below now have been changed to the real deployed ones, they are not from my test pages any more. --David Göthberg 13:26, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

I came up with an idea. Most of our crypto articles do not have a navigation box. For new readers it might be hard to find the main crypto pages where they can read about the basics. The category system partially solves this, and so does the crypto portal and its crypto portal box. However, how about having a generic crypto navigation box at the bottom of all crypto articles that do not have a specialised navigation box? And use it instead of the crypto portal box on those pages. Here is a draft of what I am thinking of:

Cryptography
v • d • e
History of cryptography | Cryptanalysis | Cryptography portal | Topics in cryptography
Symmetric-key algorithm | Block cipher | Stream cipher | Public-key cryptography | Cryptographic hash function | Message authentication code | Random numbers


What do you guys think? --David Göthberg 17:19, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

The box itself looks OK to me, but how do you plan to deal with articles that are linked from your box, but already have their own boxes (e.g., block cipher)? I'd think that users expect to see the same box on all referenced articles, but two boxes on top of each other would look silly as well. -- intgr 18:04, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
Hi intgr. Well, I think articles that has a specialised navigation box should then not have this generic box. They can instead have the small crypto portal box and then perhaps the portal can have the generic box at the bottom. Or we could perhaps add the items from the generic box into a special section in the specialised boxes, perhaps below a horisontal line in those specialised boxes. This probably needs some thinking and testing. I added some tests of that in the comments section of my testpage but I didn't like the result. Oh and by the way, feel free to edit the generic box even though it currently resides on a test page below my userpage. --David Göthberg 18:45, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, I like the idea of having a generic section in the specialized boxes. The second example on User:Davidgothberg/Test5 looks pretty good to me. I suppose we'll need two templates then, though? One with the frame of the new cryptography box, and another that will get included in the frame, as well as specialized boxes. -- intgr 12:33, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, it seems we will have to resort to double transclusion. I have already done some tests so I think I know exactly how to code it. I'll do a little more work on those combined boxes to see how nice I can make them look. Although that will be in some days from now since I am going out all this weekend. --David Göthberg 12:49, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
Stream ciphers
v • d • e
Algorithms: A5/1 | A5/2 | FISH | Grain | HC-256 | ISAAC | MUGI | Panama | Phelix | Pike | Py | Rabbit | RC4 | Salsa20 | Scream | SEAL | SOBER | SOBER-128 | SOSEMANUK | Trivium | VEST | WAKE
Theory: Shift register | LFSR | NLFSR | Shrinking generator Standardization: eSTREAM
Cryptography
v • d • e
History of cryptography | Cryptanalysis | Cryptography portal | Topics in cryptography
Symmetric-key algorithm | Block cipher | Stream cipher | Public-key cryptography | Cryptographic hash function | Message authentication code | Random numbers


Hi again intgr. I finished the coding and you gonna like this: The stream cipher navigation box right over here uses some magic. It transcludes in the generic crypto box into its lower half but tells the generic box to loose its borders and edit button, so it doesn't look like a box in a box. So I did not have to use an extra template. And all parts of it even stretches out correctly in all screen resolutions. Neat isn't it?

So what do the rest of you think of the layout etc?

--David Göthberg 17:36, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

That's great! I can see some slight but noticeable margins on the "inner box", though (the at the right and left of the heading in particular) - perhaps it's possible to get rid of those as well? -- intgr 19:45, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
Ah, glad you like it. And yeah, the lower blue bar is 1-2 pixel shorter on each side than the upper bar. I didn't think you guys would notice it, darn. But I think I know how I can fix it, but it will cause yet another table inside the box which will make the code more messy. But I will try it. By the way, the extra space above the lower bar I have put there on purpose, otherwise it kind of disturbed the text above it. --David Göthberg 20:42, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
Ok, tested fixing that margin. Looked great in Firefox but made it look very ugly in my Internet Explorer. So the old version seems best with the slight extra margin. --David Göthberg 21:28, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
Don't bother then, I guess. :) I also noticed that the centered titles aren't aligned to each other since the upper one has an 'edit' link in the right, but if it can't be fixed cleanly, I don't think you should resort to hacks. I think the boxes are ready for use. -- intgr 23:34, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
Well, there are several reasons I removed the edit link from the lower box. (And I understand that you did not suggest to put it back). It looked better without, it is confusing if the two edit buttons go to different pages, that generic box won't be edited that often any way, it will have the edit button on all pages where it is alone any way and I intend to have a link to it in the explanation below the other boxes on their template pages. So it will be easy enough for editors to reach it. But it is easy to fix the symmetry if people notice it too much. We can add some extra "& nbsp ;" blanks to the left of the titles. But I prefer to keep the code in the boxes as simple as possible to not confuse later editors of them.
Thanks for thinking the boxes are ready for use. However, yesterday I went crazy and tried something even more advanced! As you might know there are a handful of pages that have use of two or more of the boxes. Say both the block cipher and stream cipher box. So I have come up with an even more advanced design: Instead I start with the generic crypto box, and then instead insert one or more of the other boxes above it. But still within the same frame since we always want the generic box too. So say you want to combine the block and stream box, then you could use this "command": {{Crypto navbox|block|stream}} Which results in a combined box with the stream box on top, then the block box and then the generic crypto box at the bottom. The "|block|stream" part are parameters to the generic navbox and tells it to insert the other two boxes in its top. I already tried it and it works. I just need to tinker a bit more with it before it is ready for use. I think this will be a more flexible aproach that will make all our crypto editors happy.
--David Göthberg 12:25, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
Block ciphers
v • d • e
Algorithms: 3-Way | AES | Akelarre | Anubis | BaseKing | Blowfish | C2 | Camellia | CAST-128 | CAST-256 | Cobra | CMEA | Crab | CS-Cipher | DEAL | DES | DES-X | DFC | FEAL | FROG | G-DES | GOST | Grand Cru | Hasty Pudding Cipher | ICE | IDEA | IDEA NXT | Iraqi | KASUMI | KHAZAD | Khufu and Khafre | Libelle | LOKI89/91 | LOKI97 | Lucifer | MacGuffin | Madryga | MAGENTA | MARS | Mercy | MESH | MISTY1 | MMB | MULTI2 | NewDES | NOEKEON | NUSH | Q | RC2 | RC5 | RC6 | REDOC | Red Pike | S-1 | SAFER | SC2000 | SEED | Serpent | SHACAL | SHARK | Skipjack | SMS4 | Square | TEA | Triple DES | Twofish | XTEA
Design: Feistel network | Key schedule | Product cipher | S-box | SPN Attacks: Brute force | Linear / Differential / Integral cryptanalysis | Mod n | Related-key | Slide | XSL
Standardization: AES process | CRYPTREC | NESSIE Misc: Avalanche effect | Block size | IV | Key size | Modes of operation | Piling-up lemma | Weak key
Stream ciphers
v • d • e
Algorithms: A5/1 | A5/2 | FISH | Grain | HC-256 | ISAAC | MUGI | Panama | Phelix | Pike | Py | Rabbit | RC4 | Salsa20 | Scream | SEAL | SOBER | SOBER-128 | SOSEMANUK | Trivium | VEST | WAKE
Theory: Shift register | LFSR | NLFSR | Shrinking generator Standardization: eSTREAM
Cryptography
v • d • e
History of cryptography | Cryptanalysis | Cryptography portal | Topics in cryptography
Symmetric-key algorithm | Block cipher | Stream cipher | Public-key cryptography | Cryptographic hash function | Message authentication code | Random numbers


Above is an example of the new "main crypto navigation box" with two other "specialised navigation boxes" inserted above it. When this is deployed the example above should be the result of this code:

{{crypto navbox | stream | block}}

Go read Template:Crypto navbox and Template:Crypto stream for a description of how I plan these boxes should be used. Notice that the code on those pages are not exactly the "production code" since that code is adapted to run from my testpages.

For technichal reasons and for easy deployment I intend to use this naming for our new boxes:

Template:Crypto navbox
Template:Crypto block
Template:Crypto stream
Template:Crypto public-key
Template:Crypto hash
Template:Crypto machines
Template:Crypto classical

I am now ready to deploy these new boxes. And I know how to deploy them smothly and easily. All I need is the go ahead from some of you crypto editors and I will do it. --David Göthberg 00:39, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Looks neat! Thanks for the hard work. You have my approval. :) And it seems that you managed to fix the extra margins around the title of the generic box after all. -- intgr 01:22, 24 September 2006 (UTC)
I couldn't wait any more. I have gone boldly ahead and deployed this. You can see the result on any of our articles that use our old navigational templates. Or at the Wikipedia:WikiProject Cryptography. (The page that this page is the talk page of.) Hope you guys like it. Now what is left to do is to clean up the about 300 articles that use the old templates, so they use the new templates directly instead of double transclusion through the old templates. And adding the main template to all the other 800 cryptography articles... --David Göthberg 19:03, 24 September 2006 (UTC)
Guess I am crazy, but I have just updated about 300 pages. And fixed a lot of other small things along the way. --David Göthberg 12:02, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Navigational template usage

Hi everyone! As you might have seen I have made some rework of our navigational templates. I'd like to have some feedback/comments/views on how they should be used. Everything I am talking about here is visible in the Wikipedia:WikiProject Cryptography#Navigational_templates. Here are my suggestions and questions:

1: We now have a "main crypto navigation box" below all the other navigation boxes with links to the main/basic pages. I hope every one like that?

2: We of course need to ponder exactly what that main box should contain. So far it just contains my suggestions. But I suggest we keep it fairly short and don't fill it with many links.

3: I suggest we use that "main crypto navigation box" on ALL crypto pages.

4: Regarding the small "Cryptography portal" box (the one with the yellow key in): I should mention that I don't use portals anywhere so I have no feel for portal stuff. So I have no idea how and how much we should "advertise" the portal. We now have a link to the portal from the main box so all pages with a crypto navigation box do link to the portal. However I have realised that link is not especially visible. So perhaps we should use that portal box in many or even all "See also" sections on all crypto pages? It seems to be inline with what Frap has been doing lately. But my only point of view is that we should NOT add it to the top of articles, instead only to the "See also" section and if there is no such section to one of the other lower sections or in lack of that even skip the box on that page.

Well, that was all. Sorry for filling up this page faster than it seems you people have time to answer. --David Göthberg 13:05, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Nice work with the templates, keep up the good stuff. Although (1) I like it, (3) I don't know if we should use a navigation box on all pages. It wouldn't hurt. Maybe just those that would fall within a "topic" (like "stream" or "hash" etc), which, of course, is still a large proportion. (4) I think we should avoid promoting the crypto portal heavily. I agree that it shouldn't be on the top of crypto articles. Personally, I feel we shouldn't use it in many articles at all (exceptions being Cryptography, and maybe a couple of others). — Matt Crypto 17:51, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Project directory

Hello. The WikiProject Council has recently updated the Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory. This new directory includes a variety of categories and subcategories which will, with luck, potentially draw new members to the projects who are interested in those specific subjects. Please review the directory and make any changes to the entries for your project that you see fit. There is also a directory of portals, at User:B2T2/Portal, listing all the existing portals. Feel free to add any of them to the portals or comments section of your entries in the directory. The three columns regarding assessment, peer review, and collaboration are included in the directory for both the use of the projects themselves and for that of others. Having such departments will allow a project to more quickly and easily identify its most important articles and its articles in greatest need of improvement. If you have not already done so, please consider whether your project would benefit from having departments which deal in these matters. It is my hope that all the changes to the directory can be finished by the first of next month. Please feel free to make any changes you see fit to the entries for your project before then. If you should have any questions regarding this matter, please do not hesitate to contact me. Thank you. B2T2 00:02, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Disk encryption reorganization

The articles about disk encryption really need to be reorganized. Right now there is a considerable amount of redundancy in their content. The list of articles follows:

In my view, there should be three main articles: one would explain the difference between 'full disk encryption' and 'filesystem-level encryption', and introduce the common concepts. The other two articles would explain each of the two in detail (since the approaches share very little conceptually).

Cryptographically, there is a great difference between (1) decrypting file, using it, and encryption back; and (2) transparent encryption of a writable block device. In the former case one uses CBC or CTR mode, in the latter LRW or XEX. AFAIK, there is no such difference between filesystem-level encryption and block-device encryption: if one wants to be able to update file in place, he must use the same techniques. There is a difference in user experience between pre-boot encryption of disk, encryption of a non-system partition, storing encrypted volume in a file system, and encryption of separate files. But this difference is not cryptographically significant—each of these methods should use the same underlaying techniques. GBL 11:16, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for your response. I agree that there isn't a big difference from the cryptography perspective, but there is a significant difference in layering, the functionality that can be provided and the complexity of implementations (see filesystem-level encryption if you want some examples). I can't see why you're only emphasizing differences from the cryptographic perspective; Wikipedia is supposed to be a general-purpose encyclopedia. That said, I think there is a bigger difference between filesystem-level and raw block device encryption, than there is between different raw block device approaches (whether they encrypt the whole disk, individual partitions or are backed by a file on a file system, or whether it is initialized before the operating system, as thes are a difference in the features and not the concept). Also, the filesystem-level encryption article is currently forced to link to "disk encryption" – while it doesn't in fact, encrypt the disk, but individual files on it, so I think the "disk encryption" article is currently misnamed if it is supposed to apply to both (although I cannot come up with another title at this point). -- intgr 14:40, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
I guess there are two broad categories of people who come to Wikipedia to read about disk encryption: the first category want to know what software they need to download to encrypt their data, the second category want to know what cryptography is under the hood of disk encryption. Clearly, to make all of them happy we should provide good disambiguation. I don't think it is very important what are the exact names of articles, as far as after reading the first paragraph the readers know what page they want to visit. Originally I thought that it is not too bad to have disk encryption theory under disk encryption, but we can also rename "disk encryption" to "disk encryption theory" and make "disk encryption" a purely disambiguation page with links to "place of encryption layer", "disk encryption software", "disk encryption hardware", and "disk encryption theory." GBL 11:16, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Also, what to do with the current disk encryption article? I don't think it would make a good generic article in its current shape. The different modes of operation would probably go into their own article? Or merge with block cipher modes of operation? Ideas? See also: Talk:Full disk encryption#Merge with OTFE -- intgr 22:56, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Disk encryption describes techniques used to encrypt and decrypt data on a block device. IMO, after the recent clean up it is quite good in describing this. It is possible to move LRW, XEX, CMC, and EME to separate short articles, but these modes used only for encryption of a block device, so IMO it is better to leave them together. Btw, I don't think that maths in cryptography articles should be considered "not friendly" :-) GBL 11:16, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
I was thinking of moving all the modes to a single article, like has been done with block cipher modes of operation (I agree that they do need a separate article from block ciphers). I think it's not friendly in the sense that people who are looking for information on practical disk/filesystem encryption are likely to encounter that article – as it has a pretty generic-sounding title – and probably end up scratching their heads. Instead, I think, such a generic article (although not necessarily with the same title) should introduce different approaches to encrypting things on a disk (and of course also link to the article discussing different modes of operation). -- intgr 14:40, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
I doubt that they will scratch their heads if they read the first paragraph that contains links to relevant topics. Probably, making disk encryption a purely disambiguation page is a good idea. GBL 11:16, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the response, GBL. Seems that we agreed on everything now. ;) Just to get a clear overview, here's what I understand we agree on:

  • The distinction between filesystem-level encryption and block device encryption has to be made (in articles describing the subject as well as the "list of" articles).
  • Generic-sounding articles that could refer to either, such as disk encryption and encrypted filesystem, should be disambiguation pages.
  • There should be a third article discussing the differences and similarities between the two approaches.
  • Current disk encryption article should not be merged with either of the above, but just be moved to a more appropriate title.
  • No big distinction should be made between OTFE and full disk encryption; the two would be merged into an article on general "block device encryption".

Any further comments? I would like to get the opinions of anyone familiar with the topic. -- intgr 19:34, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

What hasn't been discussed yet:

  • Is "block device encryption" too obscure to use it as the title of an article? What are the alternatives?
  • What to do with what's in the relevant parts of deniable encryption article? It currently documents two techniques of plausible deniability that can be (and often are) used in encryption solutions (the "container-based" approach in block device encryption and "layered" approach in filesystem-level encryption). Are they fine as they are currently? Would the two techniques be moved or copied to the relevant articles discussing the approach it applies to? Or to the one contrasting the two approaches? -- intgr 19:34, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

I moved disk encryption to disk encryption theory and fixed some links (you are right, “block device encryption” is too obscure; by the way, I guess block device encryption, if created, should redirect to encryption layer in storage stack). Disk encryption is now a disambiguation page that links to theory, software/hardware, and encryption layer in storage stack (any idea about a better name before we create it?). Instead of creating this page we can move full disk encryption to it (FDE already has some content about distinction between encryption on different layers) and then merge in all related stubs (OTFE and filesystem-level encryption). GBL 13:47, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

What I mean under "block device encryption" is what's currently covered by the full disk encryption and OTFE articles – a layer that transparently encrypts any block-addressable device (either physical or loopback), providing another virtual block device that can be used as a base for normal file systems. So I don't think it should redirect to "encryption layer in storage stack". Perhaps "mass storage encryption" is a better name (inspired by USB "mass storage device" that exports a raw block device instead of a USB file system)? This is what I would like to contrast to filesystem-level encryption.
As for the "encryption layer in storage stack" article, perhaps it can take the place of disk encryption? As you created it, it currently already disambiguates between the two concepts, and links to disk encryption theory that generally applies to both. -- intgr 14:35, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
I guess we use the same words to denote different things. What I denote encryption layer in storage stack is an article that explains that: There is a stack of storage (logical block addressing or cylinder-head-sector (CHS) abstraction in the bottom, partitions as the next layer, filesystem as the top layer). The encryption layer can be inserted between any pair of layer, on the top, or in the bottom. Depending on the placement we get FDE, partition encryption, or filesystem encryption (in addition loopback can be used to start a new stack using a file). And after this introduction we merge all the related stubs and add (if not already present) comparison between different placements. I don't think it's a good idea to leave a separate article for each such placement—there are too much common background and comparisons. GBL 08:38, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
I was thinking of somewhat the same thing, just without the distinction between full disk and partition-level encryption – as I figured that both of these as well as the differences could be covered by the article that talks about these in general (what I've been referring to as "block device encryption" and later "mass storage encryption").
I still think that filesystem-level encryption, as done by the file system implementation, is fundamentally different, since it is (can be) deeply intertwined with how the file system operates, and is not just an layer of encryption by itself, but rather a class of file systems.
What do you think? -- 10:37, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "MD series"? Looking for suggestions

Hi guys,

I'm not (yet) familiar with the guidelines of this project. Someone asked on the MD4 talk page whether MD4 was really the fourth in a series. As you can see from my reply there I'm looking for a way to add that historical information without duplicating it in all MDx articles. Perhaps you have already an established way to do this. Otherwise I was thinking to a little "The MD series" infobox, with (e.g.) the year of publication/creation of each algorithm and its inventor. Opinions? —Gennaro Prota•Talk 23:26, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

I quickly put up a simple infobox to cope with the problem (see MD4). I know it's far from professional at the moment, but being unfamiliar with this project guidelines, I wanted to hear some comment first. If it is basically ok I'll make refinements. BTW, any reason why the MD4 article has no {{CryptographyProject}}/{{CryptographyReader}} tags? —Gennaro Prota•Talk 15:04, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
Perhaps the infobox could be turned into a generic infobox for hash functions, and the series could be linked together through the 'derived from' and 'derived to' fields. Infoboxes should generally outline the factual characteristics of the subject, not provide context for the article. The latter is typically achieved through navboxes (navigation boxes) — we can use those for this purpose. In addition, a new "MD series" article could be created to serve as the main article for this infobox. Thoughts? -- intgr 17:35, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
I agree, although I'd query whether we actually need a new MD series article? Could we not cover them all in Ronald Rivest? Only MD2, MD4 and MD5 are algorithms of note, and of those (I believe) only MD4 and MD5 are related. — Matt Crypto 17:43, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
If we're not going to have articles on MD1 and MD3 then is it really worth a navbox? Although the existence of such hash functions should be documented somewhere. Or what do you think should be the criteria for the navbox, would it be "MD series hash functions", "hash functions by Ronald Rivest" or something else? Also, wouldn't it be duplicating {{crypto hash}}? This problem is harder than I thought. :) -- intgr 19:16, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Stablepedia

Beginning cross-post.

See Wikipedia talk:Version 1.0 Editorial Team#Stablepedia. If you wish to comment, please comment there. ★TWO YEARS OF MESSEDROCKER★ 03:44, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

End cross-post. Please do not comment more in this section.

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