Talk:Padding (cryptography)

Matt,

Padding is, in some sense, a higher genus of thing than both whitening and use of an IV. I was attempting to use the reference to both here as 1) an invitation to follow the link and learn something and 2) an attempt to make clear that -- at least conceptually -- both are additions (in principle arbitrary) to plaintexts or keys and so something of the same type, however different the details.

I don't see the generalisation. As I understand it, "padding" is an extension of the length of a message, such as "CAT" -> "CATXX". "Whitening" refers to scrambling the plaintext using a binary group operation with a subkey at either the initial or final round of an iterated block cipher. They are unrelated concepts, unless there's a different usage that I'm not aware of. Initialisation vectors are similarly unrelated conceptually, but I reckon its worth a "see also" since both are details that crop up when using block cipher modes.

A whitening article was, I suppose, in my future after some looking up of details I can't trust my memory to supply with fidelity. Sigh.

Go for it; I included a link from the Camellia article with that intention.

I suggest we reinstall mention of both whit and IV, with suitable notations as to the details of usage and such.

I think separate articles would be better.

You might be interested to hear that I have finally had a penny drop. Seems like it took long enough. Many of the differences between you and I seem to be based in our attitude toward the reader. I keep always foremost in mind that the reader will be looking not only for facts but, being unfamiliar with the territory in many (most, nearly all, every?) case, and will benefit from explanation you deem surplus. Does this seem so to you as well? If so, do you have any suggestions as to how we might hit some middle ground on this dimension? ww 20:32, 12 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I agree that explanation that aids comprehension is good. However, some explanation can be extraneous and actually detract from the reader's understanding. I think we often disagree on what the reader is looking to find out, particularly in the encyclopedia vs textbook thing. — Matt 21:12, 12 Apr 2004 (UTC)