Talk:Snake oil (cryptography)
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good start
JS, An excellent start. I'll have at it some in the next few days (modulo time and diversions) to tighten it up a bit. Thanks. ww 14:24, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)
orientation of article
The point of this article, in my view, is three fold. First, to make known to readers that there exists a class of crypto nonsense. Second, to make known to readers some of the characteristics of said nonsense. Third, to make known to readers why this nonsense is nonsense (or at least some sense of why if not the excrutiating details). None of these purposes is NPOV, nor need any say nasty things about particular products or systems. However deserving...
- Actually, I disagree with your assessment of the purpose of this article. Our agenda isn't "to get the word out" about weak cryptosystems, but rather to document what people mean by "snake oil" in cryptography, and also to document how and why some cryptographers characterise some products as bogus. Notice the change of emphasis -- we're not delivering the verdict ourselves, but describing the arguments used by others. If we don't take this approach, we veer towards POV: Not everyone agrees with the assessment of what constitutes "snake oil"; certainly snake oil vendors don't, and opinion how telling individual "snake oil signs" are also varies -- e.g. quite respectable cryptographers (NSA or GCHQ) will use secret algorithms; other respectable cryptographers will promote new constructions without extensive analysis (e.g. Ferguson and Schneier in Practical Cryptography) etc...
- We certainly cannot absolutely condemn certain forms (snake oil) of crypto, in much the same way we can't trash certain forms of alternative medicine in the context of modern medical opinion. What we can do is present the arguments, and that will have the desired side effect anyway. — Matt 12:46, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)
- Matt, In thinking about a response to your comment above, I keep ending up with an image of extreme PC ending in a quivering failure to to cope with such nonsense as junk science and assorted other mental vacuities. iN our case, merely because someone says something or believes something does NOT justify straightforward inclusion in an encyclopedia, WP or otherwise. But how to convert this to a policy is less clear. Thus, the fact there are many people (oh, I despair of my species!) believe that the moon landings were faked by Hollywood and the CIA may be a fact worth reporting here. Perhaps in an article about lunatic beliefs of the loony? Having an article which explains how it was all faked, or which otherwise takes such things seriously, would certainly not be. I am not happy with my inability to produce a policy better than Potter Stewart's 'I know worthless junk when I see it'. ww 17:25, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Several of the edits in the last week or so (as of 04.08.10) have had the effect of greatly reducing the article's effectiveness, particularly for the 2nd and 3rd points. In this respect the prior article was better WP coverage of this topic. We can do better, and some of that content should be restored. Comments? ww 13:51, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)
- The old article didn't feel very NPOV, and while the new one is more reserved, I think it stays on topic better and is more encyclopedic, while still giving the lay reader the right information to make good decisions. The old one would have made a great usenet FAQ, though. Lunkwill 18:14, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)
- L, There are some phrasing improvements, I agree, but I stand by my comment above. I'll try to get back to this and see if I can't find a happy median all can live with. (On WP this may be a fantasy, but hope springs eternal...). ww 14:53, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)
a missing sign of snake oil?
One other sign of snake oil, which I don't see listed, is a claim of the variety: "top cryptographers at institution A, B, and C haven't been able to break our encryption." Usually such a challenge involves the vendor sending some short piece of ciphertext to a researcher and challenging him/her to find the plaintext and/or key, without the aid of the algorithm or any other attack that could be easily be mounted in the real world. (Not that a top cryptographer at institution A, B, or C would want to waste his/her time debunking a particular brand of snake oil in the first place.) I think this kind of claim is pretty common among snake oil vendors.
- Okey-doke. It's so much easier to whip out an informal complaint than to write a clean addition in NPOV, though... :) --Chris Peikert 05:08, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Bullet points?
Came here via peer review. Overall, I think the article is very lucid and well-written, clear to the layman (me!), and NPOV. I wonder about the lengthy bullet-pointed paragraphs -- bullets seem to be better used for short points, and I think this would read as well or better as separate paragraphs, (with or without similar issues being grouped under subheaders of Common characteristics). What do you think? [[User:CatherineMunro|Catherine\talk]] 04:28, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)
- Thanks for taking the time to look over the article! I agree that the bullet-point format needs fixing, and yes, perhaps paragraphs or even subsections (===X===) would be a good solution. — Matt 12:03, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)
NPOV
I've a number of reservations about this article. It reads, at times, like a prescriptive guide to avoiding weak cryptography, like the Snake Oil FAQ., and a lot of it is opinion and not NPOV — of course, it may be wise opinion, but I don't think it fits for neutrality. I'm a bit stuck on how best to fix it. Do we really need a large list of "signs", and then to present the argument behind each sign? Is there a better approach? — Matt 12:03, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I still think this article is POV at present. We present a set of security doctrines, and we argue the case for those principles; however, I don't think it's neutral to advocate these principles because they are not universally agreed upon. I'll try and reword it so that it reads as a description of the arguments, not as the argument itself. — Matt Crypto 11:53, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)