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From: adacrypt on 3 May 2010 11:48

I’m talking about encapsulation ciphers and I think I had better
explain exactly what I mean here. I mean ciphers in which the
plaintext is embedded directly in some transformed form within the
ciphertext and is protected from cryptanalysis by means of a key or
keys. These same keys are later used to invert the ciphertext back
into plaintext or indeed messagetext as it is now.

Up to say the arrival of ASCII and computers in or around 1963 it is
safe to say that all ciphers were of this type – they were largely
either trans-positional or substitution type in design principle.
These ciphers were almost never number-theoretic as such but all that
changed with the arrival of computer science and it is true to say
that from say 1970 onwards ciphers became intensely number-theoretic
as a natural fallout of the burgeoning computational power of
computers that could drive them at great speed and handle almost any
algorithm.

Whatever blessing this was to cryptographers it was an equal blessing
to cryptanalysts however and what might seem a great advance in
cryptography was negated in practice by the latter fact.

Forty years down the road shows that the situation has not improved
and the cryptanalysts are still so hot on the heels of the
cryptographer that there has been no great net gain in terms of
security of communications in the industry.

The status quo is still using encapsulation ciphers. The unfortunate
thing about this situation in my view is the fact that the plaintext
is in there albeit in a strange form within the ciphertext and to a
cryptanalyst it is there for the finding. It will always attract the
attention of cryptanalysts while that situation continues.
Encapsulation ciphers can never be made unbreakable.

To get to the point therefore I am saying that if cryptography is ever
to become categorically secure then that situation must change – there
has to be a complete change from encapsulation cryptography.- it must
stop forthwith. No matter what mathematics a cryptographer uses then
the same mathematics is available to the cryptanalyst. I postulate
after much thought that the way forward in the long term for the
future of the industry is in the mutual database cryptography that I
am promoting from my websites http://www.adacrypt.com (A new Approach
to Cryptography) and http://www.scalarcryptography.co.uk.

This cryptography uses implicit markup technology instead of explicit
embedding in the ciphertext. It is being called variously, markup
cipher design , trapdoor ciphers, or vector cryptography in one
instance and scalable key cryptography in another. The salient thing
about this cryptography is that the vulnerable ciphertext in transit
has a referencing role only and is data that is useless to any
adversary without the databases that it relates to, intercepting it is
totally worthless to anybody.

It can be demonstrated that this cryptography is theoretically
unbreakable according to the highest standards of the industry.

I shall put my head on the block now:

We are at a pivotal point in the history of cryptography. The way
forward is to discontinue using encapsulation ciphers altogether and
instead concentrate on mutual database technology using one-way
trapdoor ciphers. In this cryptography each plaintext has a separate
trapdoor that is stored sequentially in the mutual databases and
retrieved in the same order at decryption time. The trapdoor
information enables the decryption process of each ciphertext element
to begin.

All future realistic research should be in this field of cryptography
that might be generally classed as markup cipher design , or trapdoor
cipher design (take your pick of names) in any suitable field of
mathematics.

Complete demonstration working ciphers and compiler are downloadable
from these websites for the doubting snake-oilers (whatever that
means) – adacrypt.
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