I haven’t gotten very far with Lab #1. I’m really still trying to grok all of the information presented in class, which is extensive. I’ve read several postings and pages from the class e-mail list, and I *THINK* I’m starting to see where I should begin. The: “A Tutorial on Linear and Differential Cryptanalysis” paper was especially helpful. The link can be found here: http://www.engr.mun.ca/~howard/PAPERS/ldc_tutorial.pdf

I downloaded the sdes16.cc code from Professor Crandall’s website, but, it wouldn’t correctly compile on my Linux box; I get a compiler error that states: -- integer constant is too large for ‘long’ type --. This is probably due to me having a 32-bit version of Ubuntu running on my laptop; I should probably upgrade to 64-bit. I did, however, get the linear.cpp and pc.cpp to correctly compile and run. I’ve been going through the code the last few evenings and have begun writing a rough algorithm for my own implementation of Professor Crandall’s modified 16-bit SDES program. The Professor is allowing us to work in groups, so I’ve teamed-up with two colleagues from work that are also taking the class: John Montoya and Jonathan Mandeville. Jonathan has an extensive background in computer security and has a lot more experience with encryption than me or John. John is a CE major with extensive hardware and some C++ experience, and I’m a junior in the CS department with experience in several languages; this should be a good pairing. We’re going to be getting together this weekend or early next week and compare notes and algorithms so we’ll know what each of us thinks should be the direction to take to solve this lab.

We’re determined to get the wine….