Yes, the fairness of the contest plays an important part, and a fair context where only the algorithm is analysed goes a long way.
"Just because no one wins a contest doesn't mean the target is secure...it just means that no one won."
Of course. But the fact that it passed revision by experts means it is (probably) safe today (and for what it is known, it might be trivially breakable "behind closed doors")
"Our Twofish cryptanalysis contest offers a $10K prize for the best negative comments on Twofish that aren't written by the authors. "
Ah ok, so contests suck, except for the ones we throw. Nice.
"There are no arbitrary definitions of what a winning analysis is." No? So what is "best negative comment"? It's still subjective. And the 2nd best gets nothing? Who determines that?
No, you're playing a semantic game with the word "contest" here. The AES competition was a tournament designed to select the best candidate from a collection of ciphers submitted by the world's best cryptographers.
The Twofish bounty was a bounty that guaranteed payment to the best technical critique of a very specific, well-defined cryptographic primitive.
> "The AES competition was a tournament designed to select the best candidate from a collection of ciphers submitted by the world's best cryptographers."
Fair enough. And the focus is exclusively on the algorithm (which is good).
> "The Twofish bounty was a bounty that guaranteed payment to the best technical critique of a very specific, well-defined cryptographic primitive"
"the best technical critique" is still subjective.
In the context of a crypto competition that sort of bounty is a way to try to get more attention to your design, therefore making your candidate more likely to be selected. Many designs are rejected due to lack of analysis at the time of the selection process. It's better to pick a well-analyzed primitive than a not-so-well analyzed one that looks more solid but is more of a gamble.
No? Doesn't this fit the definition of a contest? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Encryption_Standard_pr...
Yes, the fairness of the contest plays an important part, and a fair context where only the algorithm is analysed goes a long way.
"Just because no one wins a contest doesn't mean the target is secure...it just means that no one won."
Of course. But the fact that it passed revision by experts means it is (probably) safe today (and for what it is known, it might be trivially breakable "behind closed doors")
"Our Twofish cryptanalysis contest offers a $10K prize for the best negative comments on Twofish that aren't written by the authors. "
Ah ok, so contests suck, except for the ones we throw. Nice.
"There are no arbitrary definitions of what a winning analysis is." No? So what is "best negative comment"? It's still subjective. And the 2nd best gets nothing? Who determines that?