Talk:The Magic Words are Squeamish Ossifrage

Why not eplain it enough so that it makes sense as one reads it, like most encyclopedia entries? Or delete it. Wetman 18:21, 25 Mar 2004 (UTC)

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which is amusing, but unfortunate, as it provides a 'crib' for the cryptanalyst. With modern ciphers this may not be very important; however, Bletchley Park cryptanalysts went to some lengths to arrange for them.

I'm not sure what this means. Arrange for what? -- Arvindn 06:15, 27 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Cribs, I think, aka. known plaintexts. However, I don't really think this point is worth mentioning. It's certainly not "unfortunate"; for modern crypto it's pretty much irrelevent whether you obtain a crib or not, unlike for WWII cryptography. — Matt 21:53, 27 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Arvnidn, The folks at BP would sometimes arrange for something to happen which would, they expected with some certainty, result in mention in an encrypted message. In the particular case of Enigma cryptanalysis, such cribs made new key recovery rather faster when the trick succeeded. The example usually given is dropping some mines somewhere (perhaps in a channel just cleared by the Germans) which could be expected to provoke some traffic mentioning minen (which is, I understand, German for mines). Matt's point above is correct for pure cryptanalysis in our times, but cryptanalysis need not, of course, be pure. I don't know from professional experience (having not worked for my national crypto agency), but I suspect the real world of cryptanalysis is still grateful for all help possible. For instance, cell phone conversations betwixt unsavory folk (I'll finesse a definition here for brevity's sake) will usually be encrypted (if at all) with one of the not so seriously good techniques dreamed up (with the help of NSA and others) by the cellular industry. They can (all? that I know of, anyway) be broken directly (various folks, including Shamir, have found large -- surely no one with any sense could have been so sloppy/incompetent, so they look to have been deliberate -- holes in both US cellular security (done by the Telecommunications Industry Association -- in secret! supposedly w/NSA 'advive') and the European/worldwide GSM standard (supposedly done by crypto folk from the French Navy, and in secret again!), but I expect that having a crib might of some help in actual practice. ww 17:41, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Wow, the stuff about BP is very interesting. I had no idea they did that, and unless you knew it already or were familiar with WW2 tactics you wouldn't understand it from the article. The sentence in the article should be elaborated, IMHO. -- Arvindn 17:55, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Arvindn, proofreading is not my forte. Mind wandering seems to have become so. On rereading the above, I realized that I was describing (and giving an example) of what the BP folk called 'gardening'. A 'crib' in BP terminology was, as Matt correctly suggests, some expected known plaintext. As in "Heil Hitler" at the beginning of every message, or "nothing to report" (in German of course) at the beginning of most every message from a particularly bored station (all of which ended up with the same cyphertext length -- another big clue). I will reword to correct possible warps in impression.

I agree that it's interesting, and that it's opaquely brief here, but (I am to blame for the original comment) I was trying to actually be brief (and merely suggestive), hoping that readers would follow the links. The comment seemed to me to be the sort of thing folks might enjoy finding in an encyclopedia, and brief enough to be harmless; I certainly know enough people who enjoy following such links -- in paper encylopedias, even. There's a phrase from sports (my impression is US basketball originally, but ?) -- 'No harm, no foul'. Suggesting, more or less, that all's acceptable if it causes no harm. I was shooting (sorry, couldn't resist) for something like that here.

I suspect there might be some objection to such an attempt as this, and I'm not sure how to: 1) reply except to explain that I think it's useful (or interesting ) enough to be in an article, or 2) avoid getting into an edit/revert war with someone who feels differently and very strongly if I do more than that. If this 'grace note' should get deleted, do you have an idea of how/where it should/could be put? How/where to elaborate as you suggest would be of use? ww 19:34, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Fax CPU time???

Umm... shouldn't that be VAX??? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 70.133.4.65 (talk) 08:54, 7 April 2007 (UTC).

No, it really was run on two fascimile mschines.