Re: amateur ciphers

["Perry E. Metzger" <perry@imsi.com>]

Justin Lister says:
> > The only really reasonable symmetric key ciphers out there in
> > publically described form these days are DES, 3-DES and IDEA. There
> > are a couple of things that may be okay, but which aren't out in the
> > public literature (RC2 and RC4), a couple of things that are likely
> > okay but which we are REALLY not going to find anything out about for
> > a while (Skipjack :-) and a couple of things that are promising (like
> > Coppersmith's new SEAL stream cipher, which looks quite interesting
> > indeed.)
> 
> I wonder on which evidence you base your assumptions ?? 
> (I would assume schneiers book)

More the papers in the public literature, actually.

> While Schneier's book is a very good guide, it is not very advisable to make
> assumptions on the security of algorithms based on his book. One should look
> at results from those performing cryptanalysis of such ciphers. Such as
> biham and matsui.

I fully agree. I was reading in this field a long time before Bruce
even began writing.

Perry