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Cryptol, Language of Cryptography, Now Available To the Public
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Fri Dec 26, 2008 02:44 PM
from the new-toys-to-play-with dept.
from the new-toys-to-play-with dept.
solweil writes to mention that Cryptol, a 'domain specific language for the design, implementation and verification of cryptographic algorithms,' is now available to the public. Cryptol was originally designed for the NSA. It allows for a quick evaluation and continued revisions, and is available for Linux, OS X, and Windows.
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Crack this! (Score:2, Funny)
41R5T 3N6RI27ED P057 !
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More like cryptLOL, amirite?
Kudos to NSA (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Kudos to Galois (Score:4, Interesting)
Clarification:
Cryptol, as I understand it, was developed by Galois [galois.com] (who, for some reason, is not mentioned in the summary) and not by the NSA. It would be interesting to know whether it was a joint decision between Galois and the NSA to release cryptol, or just Galois' decision alone.
Parent
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There's some documentation [galois.com] on Galois' web page. I looked at it once awhile back, and it seemed a lot like Haskell, but with extra syntax for doing common cryptographic operations.
Chapter 8 of the programming guide [galois.com] has example cryptol implementations of DES, RC5, and AES.
Re:Kudos to NSA (Score:5, Informative)
Just a correction: Regardless of who developed this (there seems to be some disagreement), nobody turned it over to the public domain. Read the license agreement: it says that you are not allowed to even create derivative works, nor redistribute the program to multiple sources, nor use it for commercial purposes.
Parent
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Far as I can see, it's a very trimmed-down formal language and not a whole lot more. Yes, a lot of the work is in the compiler, but there are plenty of well-developed compilers for languages just as well-designed, and a fair few are Open Source, not proprietary or with absurd conditions. And even those which are proprietary, such as Intel or Green Hills, the trial version is full-blown and not a toy edition. Re-implementing Cryptol as a front-end to an existing high-quality compiler, or as a translator (the
Re:Kudos to NSA (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
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So, how DO you factor large semiprimes fast?
can someone explain why this is hard to do? It seems like a straghtforward process since the number of primes is essentially fixed. (there are quite a few of them but we keep hearing announcements about a new ONE being found, so there can't be that many of them that are known, someone's got a book I'm sure)
Just a matter of looping through all known primes, seeing if x divides by it. That's order 1 since the number of primes is "fixed". If you don't find anythin
Re:Kudos to NSA (Score:5, Informative)
There are infinitely many prime numbers. [wikipedia.org]
Parent
Re:Kudos to NSA (Score:4, Funny)
There are infinitely many prime numbers. [wikipedia.org]
The GP said the number of primes is essentially fixed which is consistent with the number of primes being infinite, I suppose.
Parent
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Start with a small set to see the logic if you need to.
Say just (2, 3, and 5). All prime numbers.
Now the product of 2, 3, and 5 is 30. Add 1 to this and you get 31.
31 is not divisable by 2. The closest you can get to 31 in mulitples of two is 30 (which is 3 times 5 times... you guessed it 2.) and you have 1 left over.
31 is not divisable by 3. It's the same as 2. The closest you get is 30 (2 times 5 times... 3!) and you have 1 left over.
The same goes for 5. Because you are adding 1 to the product of all thre
Re:Kudos to NSA (Score:4, Interesting)
The RSA problem is defined as the task of taking eth roots modulo a composite n: recovering a value m such that c=me mod n, where (n, e) is an RSA public key and c is an RSA ciphertext.
Keep in mind these are typically 1024-bit (or more) numbers -- 2 ^ 1024 possible numbers to factor. Also, the world's record for factorization at the moment is for factoring a 668-bit number that took "several months of computer time using the combined power of 80 AMD Opteron CPUs. [wikipedia.org]"
Parent
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It's not so hard to factor a 32-bit number with a 64-bit computer. It is very hard to efficiently factor a 2048-bit number with a 64-bit computer. Even if you had a list of all prime numbers that can be expressed in 2k or fewer bits, streaming all that data to your CPU would take a lot of bandwidth.
You're off on your orders there (Score:5, Interesting)
Check yourself there. It takes longer to perform division on larger numbers (say O(ln(N)^2), though a lot of this depends on the algorithm). If you plan to do the sieve of eratosthenes as you describe (the hard way), that's going to be another O(n*ln(ln(N)) for a total of O(n*ln(N)^2*ln(ln(n))) for each factor.
The sort of numbers you are thinking about when you say that testing via division is O(1) with hardware are 64 bit integers. The sort of semi-primes used in cryptography are on the order of 512 bits, and so (by the formula above) would take roughly 147, 184, 841, 669, 860, 395, 336, 238, 071, 097, 320, 918, 206, 612, 375, 539, 181, 907, 207, 001, 765, 334, 079, 455, 842, 963, 079, 473, 553, 687, 769, 537, 122, 026, 054, 410, 625, 268, 901, 031, 540, 756, 829, 794, 467, 840, 000 times as long.
So if your computer took a nanosecond to solve a 64 bit case (making it faster than the fastest consumer system presently available), and you had a million of them, and all 6 billion people on Earth were your friends, and each of them had a million of these uber boxes as well, and you had a way to collaborate on the problem with no overhead, it would still take you roughly 1, 920, 658, 729, 429, 876, 148, 289, 055, 386, 140, 718, 898, 913, 520, 422, 922, 263, 604, 244, 594, 006, 798, 154, 722, 944, 671, 495, 344, 450, 391, 916, 549, 249, 431, 238 times the age of the universe to factor one such number.
That's why nobody does it that way, and why it's considered a hard problem even though it might sound easy.
-- MarkusQ
Parent
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C'mon, be fair. It's a Coke Man in the white house.
really? (Score:5, Funny)
So, wait, the NSA just released math?
Re:really? (Score:5, Funny)
Math 2.0
Parent
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Unlike New Coke and New Math, Math 2.0 is really, truly the future. For reals this time.
Cryptol? (Score:4, Funny)
Sounds more like a drug than a programming language.
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Why the precision? (Score:2, Interesting)
Is there something intrinsic to cryptographic protocols that requires a timed release?
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Well, clearly it is. They would not have bothered otherwise...
You would like to know the moment you booted cryptoSkyNet :)
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More to the point, wouldn't you like to know why they released it at 2:44pm instead of 2:45pm?
What do they know that we don't?
Who is lurking in the shadows outside your window?
Was that thump just a wild varmit messing around outside, or...
BOOOO!
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Steganography?
Using an NSA tool.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Doesn't it seem probable that anything created with an NSA tool will be more reversible with other NSA tools?
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Watch out. SELinux is made by NSA.
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As I understand it, cryptol was developed by Galois, a private company, and not by the NSA. Whether you find this reassuring or not is up to you. However, if a tool for developing cryptographic protocols were to, say, substitute a weak algorithm in place of a strong one, in many cases it would simply fail to interoperate with any reference implementation not developed using cryptol.
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Doesn't it seem probable that anything created with an NSA tool will be more reversible with other NSA tools?
How do you "back door" math?
Interesting for discrite math. (Score:5, Interesting)
Neat. There's some similarity to Matlab, and some to Renderman, and some of the syntax is borrowed from Haskell. The language is compilable to VHDL, so it's possible to generate hardware from the spec. The language is recursive and doesn't support iteration (there's no "for" statement) to make proof of correctness work easier.
This language might also be useful as a way to express compression algorithms. Reference implementations of the various "zip" algorithms in Cryptol would be useful, and ones for JPEG and MPEG compression, which are often implemented in hardware, even more useful. It's not clear how well Cryptol deals with memory-heavy problems like motion recognition or Hamming table building for compression, though.
Wait... what? (Score:2)
Why would they release this? Don't get me wrong, I, personally, am all for donating to the community and further advancing technology as a species; however, why would the NSA deliver something to the public that would, in the long run, possibly make life harder on themselves by possibly furthering the advances of private encryption? I'm not trying to play Devil's Advocate, I just genuinely don't understand why they would (possibly) make life harder for themselves.
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Why would they release this? Don't get me wrong, I, personally, am all for donating to the community and further advancing technology as a species; however, why would the NSA deliver something to the public that would, in the long run, possibly make life harder on themselves by possibly furthering the advances of private encryption? I'm not trying to play Devil's Advocate, I just genuinely don't understand why they would (possibly) make life harder for themselves.
Yes, why? This is as dangerous as releasing
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Because building hardware & software is profitable for very many companies; and getting something certified as secure enough for the NSA is pretty hard work. If they release the toolchain, it's one less thing to worry about leaking from the developer, and they have more access to better software.
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Re:Wait... what? (Score:4, Informative)
There is no such thing as trusted private encryption. Effective secure encryption is astoundingly complicated and you can not devise effective encryption in a vacuum. Lots of companies show us ineffective untrustworthy encryption which they develop in secret and which fail in short order... like CSS which is used on DVDs or the DRM in popular games and other digital media. Haven't you read folks on Slashdot mocking them for it?
So the best way is do everything out in the open and have people find the weakness in it before it goes into production. Because once it goes into production you don't need to be code breaker to enjoy the stunning stupidity of the fools that rely on private encryption... you only need to be able to find the app with google and download it.
Have a look at look at the ongoing contest for SHA-3. It's been reported here I think. Or you could the about how they came up with AES.
Here's the zoo: http://ehash.iaik.tugraz.at/wiki/The_SHA-3_Zoo [tugraz.at]
As a side note: Contests and prizes are remarkably effective method of spending the public's money for public good... as long as the results are open and patent free.
Parent
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Firstly, cryptol is being released by Galois, a private company, and not the NSA directly. I don't know the details of Galois' relationship with the NSA, but my understanding is that cryptol was developed by Galois, and it's quite likely that the NSA doesn't have any say in whether cryptol is released or not.
Secondly, there are a lot of social benefits to widespread access to good cryptography. Bad security is a constant drain on the economy, in the form of stolen credit card numbers and the like.
Thir
Finally! (Score:4, Funny)
Lack of Functionality (Score:5, Insightful)
FTFA:
"The open version does not compile to VHDL, C/C++, or Haskell, and does not produce the formal models used for equivalence checking."
So does this mean the open version (trial version) which we might have access to does not do much of what it is touted to be good for?
Just another advertisement for a commercial product methinks. Maybe cool, but still a slashvertisement.
- Toast
Re:Lack of Functionality (Score:5, Informative)
FTFA: "The open version does not compile to VHDL, C/C++, or Haskell, and does not produce the formal models used for equivalence checking."
So does this mean the open version (trial version) which we might have access to does not do much of what it is touted to be good for?
Just another advertisement for a commercial product methinks. Maybe cool, but still a slashvertisement.
- Toast
Yep. Two lines down from the above quote it states:
"Contact Galois to obtain a full-featured version for evaluation."
It's classic crippleware. Free version doesn't do anything useful, and the "full-featured" version costs money and uses a dongle or something.
Parent
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From the download page:
So, they're providing a compiler and an interpreter. It sounds like there's enough restrictions that it would be hard to use anything cryptol-derived as part of a commercial product (or even an open-sou
Public Funds (Score:2)
Considering we paid for its development with public funds, it best not be 'commercially' released.
Can Cryptol programs be Free Software? (Score:3, Insightful)
Free But Shacked - The Java Trap (Score:3, Informative)
Yes, that program would be free but see "Free But Shackled - The Java Trap [gnu.org]" for more on why this situation is not desirable.
Not NSA? (Score:2)
A casual perusal did not really confirm the connection between Galois.com and the NSA.
Google did not really help either:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&as_q=NSA&as_epq=&as_oq=&as_eq=&num=10&lr=&as_filetype=&ft=i&as_sitesearch=www.galois.com&as_qdr=all&as_rights=&as_occt=any&cr=&as_nlo=&as_nhi=&safe=on [google.com]
http://www.google.com/search?q=NSA+Galois [google.com]