In cryptography, the S-1 block cipher was a block cipher posted in source code form on Usenet on 11 August 1995. Although incorrect security markings immediately indicated a hoax, there were several features of the code which suggested it might be leaked source code for the Skipjack encryption algorithm, which was still classified at the time.
However once David Wagner had discovered a severe design flaw, it was generally accepted as being a hoax - but one with an astonishing amount of work behind it. When Skipjack was eventually declassified in 1998, it was indeed found to be totally unlike S-1.
Famous quotes containing the words block and/or cipher:
“Only he who can view his own past as an abortion sprung from compulsion and need can use it to full advantage in the present. For what one has lived is at best comparable to a beautiful statue which has had all its limbs knocked off in transit, and now yields nothing but the precious block out of which the image of one’s future must be hewn.”
—Walter Benjamin (1892–1940)
“The eye is the first circle; the horizon which it forms is the second; and throughout nature this primary figure is repeated without end. It is the highest emblem in the cipher of the world.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)