Most of the research papers presented here are more than a decade old. In my attempt to edit these documents, I tried to preserve the original text as much as possible. Apart from correcting typos and unfortunate wording I left the text unchanged. Whenever I found a section that seemed outdated or in need of complementation I added a paragraph in

[2013] a different type of font prepended with the year in brackets

to append thoughts that are helpful to put the original statements in perspective based on today's knowledge.

Many original links are not functional today. I tried to recreate the material I've linked to from files I stored at the time or I replaced the links with what I found on the internet at a different URL. In any case I don't intend to claim any copyright ownership on material I make available in the "legacy" section of this research section.

If any of the original authors feel unhappy with their material being stored in the legacy section, please complain, and I will remove the files on request after having checked the authenticity of the complainant.

Cryptographic Research

The Protection of your Secret Key

An analysis of the security mechanisms PGP provides to protect your private key with a detailed explanation of what can go desperately wrong when you try to keep your private key secure.

Key Experiments
- How PGP Deals With Manipulated Keys -

An experimental approach to investigate the mal-performance of certain PGP versions, when these programms use manipulated public keys that contain additional keys in the signed area of the new key format.

The Background of the Pure Crypto Project

Introduction to the Pure Crypto Project, an attempt to build the entire set of cryptographic primitives on Modular Exponentiation and nothing else. This project uses a discrete logarithm hash function proposed by Prof. Adi Shamir.

A Discrete Logarithm Hash Function for RSA Signatures

To reduce the complexity of a cryptosystem it can be useful to have the hash function's security based on the same foundation as the public key encryption scheme. In this respect the proposal of a discrete logarithm hash function once invented by Adi Shamir offers both, a clear concept and provable collision-resistance.