Re: Attacks on PGP

[Matt Blaze <mab@crypto.com>]

[good comments deleted]

>The lack of cryptanalysis papers at "Crypto" has been striking...I was told
>that the program committee considers cryptanalysis to be less important
>than original research. (I can see the rationale in this, as Crypto is an
>academic/research conference, and there are really no "engineering" crypto
>conferences. And cryptanalysis might not even fit into an engineering
>conference very well, as cryptanalysis is traditionally a sort of
>"hobbyist" activity--if you've read Kahn you'll know what I mean.)

Tim,

My impression (based on reviewing papers for the last few CRYPTOs and
EUROCRYPTs) is that the reason for the lack of "practical" papers is
primarily that not very many of them get submitted.  In fact, I think
there actually are a fair number of cryptanalysis papers at CRYPTO,
at least compared with the even smaller number of papers there that
describe new ciphers.  Anyway, cryptanalysis IS part of the mainstream
of the academic crypto world these days (consider differential
cryptanalysis, linear cryptanalysis, etc.)

-matt