re crypto papers on the net in bb c mizzou missouri edu c mizzou missouri edu john kelsey writes i ve recently been reading a paper of merkle s publixhed only on the net i think discussing three potential replacements for des was anyting ever done with these are khufu khafre and or snefru still being discussed anywhere i know snefru is referenced in the rsa faq and i think it may also be in the sci crypt faq the paper was distributed against the wishes of the nsa i have a copy with a few illicit distribution footnotes scribbled on it and eventually published at one of the crypto conferences things were looking good then xerox patented the algorithms plonk i don t know of anything which uses them also khafre was broken at a later conference and from work on a related algorithm i don t think the existing khufu would hold up too well against a converted differential cryptanalysis attack although it can probably be changed to resist this type of attack peter in case you don t know what the plonk is about check the new hacker s dictionary it s the sound someone makes when they fall to the bottom of a killfile
