Talk:VEST

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VEST has had a peer review by Wikipedia editors which is now archived. It may contain ideas you can use to improve this article.

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[edit] No libel here please

To Synaptic Laboratories Limited and to Benjamin Gittins: Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, for everyone to edit and to create objective neutral articles. If you want to express your own opinion, to advertise your company or to attack me personally, please do it in your own blog or on your company web site. Ruptor 01:23, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Ruptor. It seems to me like the Synaptic Laboratories version of the article is trying keenly to gloss over the fact that VEST did not make Phase 3 of eSTREAM. Irrespective of VEST's merits, the fact that it did not successfully compete with other contemporary stream ciphers in this competition is significant, if not desirable from a marketing perspective. Bob george 02:20, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

I have just read WP:COI and edited my own posts below to make them more neutral. I did the best I could. If it violates some other policy, I don't know anymore. I don't want to stir up any conflicts. My tone was not intentional, but I'll try harder to keep my posts more neutral in the future. Ruptor 09:02, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] A. Joux attack

To: whoever removed my note about the attack and to everyone else reading this, the attack paper does in fact incorrectly claim that it can recover the key faster than the parallel brute-force or general TM trade-off. I have never disputed the attack's validity, although it also incorrectly claims to be breaking MAC while the MAC is in fact calculated in the AE mode and is not using the hashing mode affected by this attack since the second phase of the competition. The attackers should have called it an attack breaking ProVEST MAC or VEST hashing mode. Recovery of 53 bits of the state is a valid attack of academic interest, but the authors claim to be able to recover the key faster than the brute-force which is not true. See the abstract: "The 53 bits retrieved reduce the complexity of the exhaustive key search by 53 bits" and compare it with the section 5.3 Complexity - "This attack recovers the key used by the cipher in 2^{max(F/2+4,F-53)} time and 2^F/2-4 memory", where F is the key length in bits). The paper does need to be corrected, so there was no need to accuse me of bad sportsmanship for pointing out those obvious mistakes. Even a collision on the IVs alone is bad enough for a cipher. I must also add that I do not agree with or approve anything stated by Synaptic Laboratories Ltd. BVI, which I am not a part of, even if they are using my name. So if anyone has any problems with VEST, take it up with me. I don't want to hear about Synaptic or their claims.

In a private conversation with the attack author during SASC 2007, he admitted that the correct cipher is not affected by his attack at all, that the attack merely exploits non-bijective operation of the counter diffusor that shouldn't have been there in the first place. I have personally told Antoine Joux on the 18th of January about the typo and I have e-mailed both authors on the 19th of January but they did not bother mentioning it or what difference it makes to their attack although they confirmed receiving my e-mail and seeing the phorum post. It took them a year and a half to find that collision? Come on! It takes 5 minutes to check the counter diffusor for bijective processing of the IV bis, after which I'd expect any decent scientist to contact the authors privately or publicly asking why they claim that every single component in the cipher is bijective. Not doing it is what bad sportsmanship is. I am also surprised that no one else had noticed it for such a long time! Kudos to the eSTREAM competition! It shows once again the importance of public cryptanalysis. A one-digit typo can cause so much trouble...

I want to see more attack papers proposing solutions so we could make better ciphers. How many rounds of the MD4 are actually secure? MD5? SHA-0/1/2? Which round functions are stronger? What could fix ABC? Py? Grain? Trivium? Hermes8?

Ruptor 17:10, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

This is original research; Wikipedia editors are not expected to evaluate the papers they cite, and if they do, that research has to be published elsewhere that is considered a reliable source. Thus, your claim on this talk page does not carry any weight as far as editing Wikipedia is concerned, since it is not subjected to peer review. For more information, you can see verifiability and attribution policies. -- intgr 17:27, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

But this has since been resolved, anyway. -- intgr 17:40, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Revision of VEST Wiki Page by Synaptic Laboratories Limited

Synaptic Laboratories Limited have made a significant revision to the VEST Wikipedia page in response to false and/or misleading statements that have entered the page since our last editing. We have strived to maintain a NPoV in our revision and have made use of extensive verifiable references. (The page was updated in multiple sections due to technical problems submitting the page as a complete article.) We comment below on the primary modifications to the page:

• Synaptic Laboratories Limited is the the rightful owner of intellectual property in the VEST cipher and the VEST trade mark. Benjamin Gittins 12:56, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

"Synaptic Laboratories Ltd" may claim that they own VEST, but it does not necessarily make it true. VEST cipher and its name are automatically a property of its author, Sean O'Neil. And if Synaptic Laboratories Ltd want to claim their ownership of it on Wikipedia, they should present a reference to the source, a proof of their claim. Ruptor 13:22, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

• VEST was submitted to the eSTREAM competition by Synaptic Laboratories Limited. Benjamin Gittins 12:56, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

VEST was submitted to the eSTREAM competition by CB Capital Management SA on behalf of Sean O'Neil. Maybe the eSTREAM organisers can show us the submission documents? Ruptor 13:22, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

• The unauthorized VEST specifications published by Sean O'Neil on ePrint 2007/016 was submitted without the knowledge or consent of the two other listed authors of the publication Benjamin Gittins & Howard Landman. This publication has since been removed as has the link to the document in our revision. Benjamin Gittins 12:56, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Both VEST specifications were submitted to the ePrint archive by Sean O'Neil who did not need anyone's authorisation to publish an updated specification of his own cipher. But he made a mistake leaving the names of Benjamin Gittins and Howard A. Landman in it, therefore all the VEST related papers were subsequently withdrawn. Ruptor 13:22, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

• Synaptic Laboratories Limited reserves the right to describe the cipher designers of VEST as "Synaptic Laboratories Limited". This is in line with the DES page on Wikipedia describing the designers of the DES cipher as "IBM". Benjamin Gittins 12:56, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

The authors of the DES were all employees of the IBM, hence the IBM is the rightful owner of the DES. Sean O'Neil has never been an employee of "Synaptic Laboratories Ltd" and has designed VEST ciphers not for "Synaptic Laboratories Ltd", but for the eSTREAM competition, by himself, in two weeks. He also wrote the original VEST specification paper by himself in two weeks after that. Sean O'Neil has never assigned the ownership of VEST ciphers to "Synaptic Laboratories Ltd". Benjamin Gittins had only provided the pictures for the specification paper and calculated the chip area as a favor to help Sean save time, and Howard A. Landman had only checked the document for clarity and consistency. Their contribution is described in the section 9 of the specification paper. It was only to the specification paper itself and was not related to the cipher design or its cryptographic properties. The name VEST was also invented by Sean O'Neil and has never been assigned to "Synaptic Laboratories Ltd" either. Therefore, they have no right to use it. It is CB Capital Management SA that was the first to use the name VEST in their submission to the eSTREAM competition. Ruptor 13:22, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

• Synaptic Laboratories Limited does not recognize the description of the VEST accumulator as a balanced T-Function. It is clearly not a T-function, as the lower 5 bits of the accumulator do not accept inputs only from the current, left or possibly carry bit as in arithmetic operations. Benjamin Gittins 12:56, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

It is a balanced T-function, and any cryptology student can confirm it. Ruptor 13:22, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

• The need to correct a single digit typographical error in the original eSTREAM Phase II submission for VEST has been formally acknowledged by Synaptic Laboratories Limited. However, Synaptic Laboratories does not recognize the Joux & Reinhard attack as being a cryptanalysis of VEST proper, but rather as an analysis of an incorrect specification (P2.0) of VEST. We have included reference to the latest publication of Joux and Reinhard that acknowledges their attacks no longer apply to the corrected VEST cipher specifications.
• A full chronology of events covering the history of the development and analysis of the VEST cipher has been listed. All information covered in the timeline is openly published.
• Greater clarity is given to identifying which version of the cipher a particular result is achieved for. For instance the hardware performance figures achieved by the ETH Zurich Hardware team is based on the ProVEST cipher specifications, and are not representative of the VEST Phase 2.x ciphers.

Synaptic Laboratories Limited regrets any inconvenience caused to readers by the necessity of using its correct corporate name in full. i.e. "Synaptic Laboratories Limited" or "Synaptic Laboratories Ltd".

Benjamin Gittins 12:56, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Wow. Do either of you have any evidence to support your claims? I'm leaning towards O'Neil, given that eSTREAM recognizes it as such, and that Mr Benjamin Gittins has not produced any independent evidence of the cipher "VEST" being developed at Synaptic Laboratories, nor any evidence of the copyright. -- intgr 13:34, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

If "Synaptic Laboratories Ltd" did have any evidence to support their claims, they would be showing everyone copies of documents signed by Sean O'Neil assigning to them property rights to VEST ciphers and to their name. They do not have such documents, although they do have a lot of documents signed by Sean O'Neil assigning to them rights to every single patent application, and they keep sending him more such papers to sign, long after they terminated his contract. I can post a copy of the last one here if you like, asking him to give up rights to another patent application for $1. The scope and even validity of all those patent applications is disputable, which is most probably the reason why they refuse to see that the cores of VEST ciphers are T-functions created more than 12 years ago, clearly not patentable. The eSTREAM competition can also show the submission papers where CB Capital Management SA is recognised as the owner and submitter of VEST ciphers. Not Synaptic. Ruptor 13:50, 21 April 2007 (UTC)