Quantifying Shannon's Work Function for Cryptanalytic Attacks

Attacks on cryptographic systems are limited by the available computational resources. A theoretical understanding of these resource limitations is needed to evaluate the security of cryptographic primitives and procedures. This study uses an Attacker versus Environment game formalism based on computability logic to quantify Shannon's work function and evaluate resource use in cryptanalysis. A simple cost function is defined which allows to quantify a wide range of theoretical and real computational resources. With this approach the use of custom hardware, e.g., FPGA boards, in cryptanalysis can be analyzed. Applied to real cryptanalytic problems, it raises, for instance, the expectation that the computer time needed to break some simple 90 bit strong cryptographic primitives might theoretically be less than two years.Comment: 19 page

Quantifying Resource Use in Computations

It is currently not possible to quantify the resources needed to perform a computation. As a consequence, it is not possible to reliably evaluate the hardware resources needed for the application of algorithms or the running of programs. This is apparent in both computer science, for instance, in cryptanalysis, and in neuroscience, for instance, comparative neuro-anatomy. A System versus Environment game formalism is proposed based on Computability Logic that allows to define a computational work function that describes the theoretical and physical resources needed to perform any purely algorithmic computation. Within this formalism, the cost of a computation is defined as the sum of information storage over the steps of the computation. The size of the computational device, eg, the action table of a Universal Turing Machine, the number of transistors in silicon, or the number and complexity of synapses in a neural net, is explicitly included in the computational cost. The proposed cost function leads in a natural way to known computational trade-offs and can be used to estimate the computational capacity of real silicon hardware and neural nets. The theory is applied to a historical case of 56 bit DES key recovery, as an example of application to cryptanalysis. Furthermore, the relative computational capacities of human brain neurons and the C. elegans nervous system are estimated as an example of application to neural nets.Comment: 26 pages, no figure

Hard x-ray or gamma ray laser by a dense electron beam

A coherent x-ray or gamma ray can be created from a dense electron beam propagating through an intense laser undulator. It is analyzed by using the Landau damping theory which suits better than the conventional linear analysis for the free electron laser, as the electron beam energy spread is high. The analysis suggests that the currently available physical parameters would enable the generation of the coherent gamma ray of up to 100 keV. The electron quantum diffraction suppresses the FEL action, by which the maximum radiation energy to be generated is limited

Thermodynamics of warped AdS3_3 black hole in the brick wall method

The statistical entropy of a scalar field on the warped AdS$_3$ black hole in the cosmological topologically massive gravity is calculated based on the brick-wall method, which is different from the Wald's entropy formula giving the modified area law due to the higher-derivative corrections in that the entropy still satisfies the area law. It means that the entropy for scalar excitations on this background is independent of higher-order derivative terms or the conventional brick wall method has some limitations to take into account the higher-derivative terms.Comment: 12 pages, 1 figure; v2. to appear in Phys. Lett. B; v3. typos correcte

Future singularity free accelerating expansion with the modified Poisson brackets

We show that the second accelerating expansion of the universe appears smoothly from the decelerating universe remarkably after the initial inflation in the two-dimensional soluble semi-classical dilaton gravity along with the modified Poisson brackets of noncommutativity between the relevant fields. However, the ordinary solution coming from the equations of motion following the conventional Poisson algebra describes permanent accelerating universe without any phase change. In this modified model, it turns out that the phase transition is related to the noncommutative Poisson algebra.Comment: 13 pages, 2 figures; v2. to appear in Phys. Rev.