asciilifeform: the 1 other tricky detail is that you gotta include block ~number~ ( or hash thereof, or some variant ) ~inside~ the plaintext for each block, or you get the penguin
asciilifeform: but if you actually touch the disk, it erases a 4096byte chunk
asciilifeform: linux goes along pretending that it's 512 for 'legacyism' , from userland pov
asciilifeform: the native one the korean nands give you is usually 4096 as it is
asciilifeform: ( in practice never tried anyffing but 512 , so whoknows )
asciilifeform: theoretically usb storage allows arbitrary block size .
asciilifeform: if, incidentally, somebody runs across the quasi-mythical src of the old attempts, potentially could decruft/fit-in-head . so plox to write in if find.
asciilifeform: and the q of 'would serpent fit in ice40' is imho also worth answering. i'ma put it in the pipe.
asciilifeform: vhdl is prolly worth a 2nd look, tho i currently suspect that it vs verilog aint a 'ada vs c' win, simply longer text that does same thing ( the only unit of data in fpgaism is really the bit, so 'types' dun exist )
asciilifeform: ( i was initially testing rk pilot plant to run off sd, discarded on acct of meh speed vs usb3 )
asciilifeform: they're still going down in cost, also.
asciilifeform: one potentially interesting variation on the theme is if a key block contained an offset-length into the drive. so pluggin in diff keys could give you diff 'disks', which are normally indistinguishable from noise.
asciilifeform: could simply make it a serial input, and let user decide what he likes, e.g. he has a vt100 he can plug in, or tape reader, or which.
asciilifeform: the remaining open q re iron is 'how to throw in key', is separate q
asciilifeform: theoretically anyffing that eats normal block devices nao, yes
asciilifeform: and yes a ciphrator that gives you a disk that runs at speed of msdos 5inch floppy, aint very sexy.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: in re the disk thing ? depends entirely on the serpentron. so open q.
asciilifeform: there actually exists an ada-flavoured variant, 'vdhl', but i never saw any win from it, loox rather like simply a moar verbose verilog. but! to be fair, that was 10y ago when i last dug, it was prior to asciilifeform's getting into adaism.
asciilifeform: it compiles into a gate netlist, rather than sequence of instructions for vonneumann cpu.
asciilifeform: theoretically in fact yes -- right here in the torture room
asciilifeform: ( if anyffing, moar -- iron sepentron is only 'broken' if it actually is captured by enemy prior to serpent-pops )
asciilifeform: and will point out, errybody who transmitted rsa-over-serpent in the 20yrs prior to $breakthrough is just as hosed as the folx who were using pocket iron serpentrons
asciilifeform: and yes i am moar willing to bet on rsa.
asciilifeform: errybody gotta take bets, sure. but must point out that there is no stiffness proof for rsa any moar than for voodoo-symmetrics.
asciilifeform: ( and his verdict was 'only about otp can talk about strength, errything else provably contains bits of key in ciphertext' )
asciilifeform: we have no concept of 'strength' that shannon didn't have in '47.
asciilifeform: but it doesn't. recall the orig symmetric thread.
asciilifeform: (and i strongly suspect that nobody will)
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: nobody's even yet invented an approach to investigating strength of symmetrics. (only weakness)
asciilifeform: it wins, theoretically, machine that can be locked/transported .
asciilifeform: it is a kind of 'escherian', as mircea_popescu likes to describe, object.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: i suspect that there will not be a 'civilized' symmetric cipher, i.e. item with less voodoo flavour to it than 'serpent'
asciilifeform: then it aint a fully volatile ciphertron tho. good % of the appeal, from my pov, was that it loses key if unplugged, and has no squirrelholes to somehow inadvertently retain key bits when off.
asciilifeform: you want the key to vanish in <1ms when you hit the red button tho
asciilifeform: funnily enuff i dun know of a single commercial/heathendom fpga that could house something of this size.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: i see plenty of merit in iron bignumtron, sure
asciilifeform: there are heathen incarnations but they all suffer from the obvious idjicies afaik.
asciilifeform: this was actually mircea_popescu's idea, originally, it was orig part of the cardano cocktail.
asciilifeform: you have a box, that presents as e.g. usb drive on 'red' end, and eats a e.g. sd card on 'black' end, with a thing between the two that serpents and unserpents (how to key it, is a separate conversation, but it can be keyed sanely so long as it is done not from pc end )
asciilifeform: imho disk cipherer is an item that could be made, a la FG, without rebuilding all of civilization, and not have to be rebaked later. supposing folx wanted it.
asciilifeform: lol from that pov no point in doing anyffing at all until we bake own ic at will , on atomic battleship..
asciilifeform: ( existing schemes resembling this are retarded primarily because they have luser enter key via pc kbd , and secondarily because they all married to aes )
asciilifeform: presents as ordinary disk when connected/keyed.
asciilifeform: in fact you would specifically not want any aspect of it visible to the pc.
asciilifeform: it'd do its thing without involving os/fs
asciilifeform: for self-ciphering block disk ? why ?
asciilifeform: ( why usb2sd chinesium, and not the usual 'usb microcontroller' ? cuz it has the 'mass storage' stack hairball in mask rom, and not reprogrammable... )
asciilifeform: serpent was bottleneck, in that gedankenbox.
asciilifeform: upstack -- ran into stack of these 'papers' when cleaning out crud, from 2yr ago when asciilifeform thought 'could make simple ciphered disk from usb2sd chip <-> ice40 <-> sdcard ' )
