What's so funny? WAS Re: rotor replacement

[Nick Craig-Wood]

Paul Rubin <http> wrote:
>  Actually and surprisingly, that's not really true.  Crypto algorithms
>  are pretty straightforward, so if you examine the code and check that
>  it passes a bunch of test vectors, you can be pretty sure it's
>  correct.

I was going to write pretty much the same thing.

If a security flaw is found in a block cipher (say) it won't be
because it has a buffer overflow etc, it will be because the algorithm
is flawed.  You can't patch up crypto algorithms, you have to throw
them away and start again (you can't have two incompatible versions of
DES for instance).

-- 
Nick Craig-Wood <nick at craig-wood.com> -- http://www.craig-wood.com/nick