5 ms·
Alice and Bob: A History of the World’s Most Famous Cryptographic Couple (2017)
- dang 7y agoDiscussed at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14801883 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14801883.
- amelius 7y agoI thought Charlie was the husband, always trying to mitm the conversation to check if Alice was being dishonest.
- braythwayt 7y agoI’ve never heard of that interpretation. But now that you say it, I am overwhelmed with a really, really icky feeling about Charlie the creepy, abusive, paranoid, controlling husband. A little OT, but such people always explain that they do what they do because everybody around them is dishonest, conspiratorial, and so forth. But they are the ones who are constantly cooking up dishonest plots to control the people around them. I use Alice and Bob all the time when writing socratic dialogues. But I switch the names around from time to time. Charlie is often Charlene, for example, mostly because I have very fond memories of a friend from my youth who was christened Charlene but insisted that everybody call her “Charlie.”
- jjoonathan 7y agoI like the version where Churchill listens to the communications of Adolf and Berlin.
- betterunix2 7y agoUsually the passive eavesdropper is Eve, while the MITM that actively modifies messages is Mallory (she can be defended against by non-malleable cryptography). Also, Charlie is sometimes Catherine, as there is a tendency to alternate genders (Alice, Bob, Catherine, Dave, Eve, etc.).
- faceplanted 7y agoThat's a surprisingly comprehensive ruleset, we always used Alice, Bob, and Carol, possibly continuing with the alternating genders for people in the conversation and Eve for the attacker. Never heard of Mallory. Also reminds me of this: https://xkcd.com/1323/ https://xkcd.com/1323/
- bregma 7y agoThat's OK. Mallory knows who you are.
- betterunix2 7y agoMallory tends to come up in the context of interactive protocols and non-malleability; for example, see this paper on SPEKE: https://eprint.iacr.org/2014/585.pdf https://eprint.iacr.org/2014/585.pdf
- Kalium 7y ago* Alice, Bob, and Carol are generally parties one, two, and three to the conversation. * Eve is a malicious eavesdropper. * Mallory is malicious, and able to participate at will. * Trent is the trusted third party. * Victor is an independent verifier.
- jgrahamc 7y agoWhen I met Bob Morris (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Morris_(cryptographer) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Morris_(cryptographer)) in the 1990s accompanied by his wife I was disappointed that she was Anne and not Alice.
- anchpop 7y ago> In the history of cryptology, women tend to be either systematically excluded or reduced to objects. I would have loved to see some more examples of this, since I wasn't aware it was an issue. Speaking specifically to exclusion, I thought a lot of the foundational work in cryptography was done by women. Disappointing to hear about systematic exclusion and marginalization in this field.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- jp_sc 7y agoA probable explanation in the other thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14804399 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14804399
- cafard 7y agoOdd not to mention https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_%26_Carol_%26_Ted_%26_Alice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_%26_Carol_%26_Ted_%26_Alic...
- atulatul 7y agoNot related to cryptography, but this reminds me of Alyssa P. Hacker from SICP.
- prvc 7y ago>Some people have suggested that the 1969 movie Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice was the origin of Alice and Bob. While it is possible—even likely—that Rivest, Shamir, and Adleman might have been familiar with the movie, there is no evidence to indicate that the movie influenced their naming decision. More likely, since Alice and Bob are common English names that start with A and B, the names were chosen without much forethought. If their speculation, that the names are arbitrary, is true, why make so much out of it? Compare with Smith and Jones, popular in philosophy. Would also have been nice for the website to have supported https.
- prvc 7y ago>there is no evidence to indicate that the movie influenced their naming decision I'd like to add that the existence of a popular contemporary movie whose title is simply a list of names, half of which are the entirety of the names in question (said movie supposedly being a cultural touchstone for RSA's generation, the Boomers), makes the latter hypothesis the less likely one by default, in my view.
- gervase 7y agoCarol is also commonly used as the 'C' when a third agent is necessary.
- gervase 7y agoIf you're interested, you can find a more comprehensive cast of cryptographic characters on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_and_Bob#Cast_of_characters https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_and_Bob#Cast_of_characte...
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]