[Cryptography] Chinese Cryptography

[Donald Eastlake]

On Thu, Dec 19, 2013 at 2:56 PM, james hughes <hughejp at mac.com> wrote:
>
> ...
>> Good call though. Wonder if they have their own cyphers.
>
> One algorithm that I know of, SMS4 has had public cryptanalysis.
>         http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMS4
> They offered it for a standard and was rejected even there has been no flaw found.

The above sentence correctly summarizes the deficient article on SMS4.
Both it and the article are misleading.

SMS4 was one small piece of WAPI which was part of an effort by the
Chinese government to fork the IEEE 802.11 standard. The result would
have been two diverging and incompatible international standards: IEEE
802.11 and a Chinese government standard. IEEE 802.11 sent numerous
invitations to China to participate in the 802.11 standards process
and, in my opinion, would have jumped at the chance to incorporate
SMS4 (after it was declassified and no longer considered a Chinese
state secret) in 802.11 if there had been any positive response from
China. What ISO voted to reject was not SMS4 but the Chinese package
of a complete incompatible alternative to IEEE 802.11.

Note that I am referring to the Chinese government above, not large
Chinese companies. Several large Chinese companies are vary active
participants in IEEE 802.11 and other IEEE standards groups.

Thanks,
Donald
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 Donald E. Eastlake 3rd   +1-508-333-2270 (cell)
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