Cryptographers have a sense of humour.
Or maybe they’re just nuts.
Read the following excerpts from peer reviewed papers and judge for yourself.
Inspired by Carter and Wegman, we use simple primitives which we call NUT (for “n-Universal Transformation”) since they are so cheap to implement. We propose construction methods for block ciphers that we call COCONUT (for “Cipher Organized with Cute Operations and NUT”), PEANUT (for “Pretty Encryption Algorithm with NUT”), and WALNUT (for “Wonderful Algorithm with Light NUT”).
-Decorrelation: a theory for block cipher security, S. Vaudenay
Then this other bunch of guys comes up with a new cipher:
In this paper we will suggest a new block cipher called DONUT (Double Operations with NUT) which is made by two pairwise perfect decorrelation modules. DONUT is secure against boomerang attack.
-New Block Cipher DONUT Using Pairwise Perfect Decorrelation, Dong Hyeon Cheon et al
(Don’t ask about the boomerang…)
I’m not surprised if, when cryptanalyst come up with a new, powerful attack that breaks all known ciphers, they call it Cryptonite.
And it pays to watch movies after all… Who knows? One day you might get to cite them in your papers! See citation 28:
The title of this paper is… <drumroll>… “Dial C for Cipher”. And in case you didn’t catch the allusion, the authors are kind enough to add a footnote:
Refering to the famous movie by Alfred Hitchcock Dial M for Murder[28]…
-Dial C for Cipher, Thomas Baignères and Matthieu Finiasz
The same authors are responsible for another cipher, the Krazy Feistel Cipher. Why “Krazy” and not “Crazy”? There might be other reasons (remember what I said about them being nuts?), but take a look at the initials…
(do I hear clucking?)
