[pycrypto] Why I would be glad to find a plenty of algorithms in pycrypto

[Stefan Spoettl]

ARC4 is fast.
ARC4 is easy to implement.
ARC4 is beautiful (my personal Mona Lisa of cryptography)

Some years ago this "arguments" appeared to me as "sufficient" to bank on it during a development of a secure protocol, which is intending to beat the SSL performance (in a concluded VPN).

As you know some "uncultured and barefaced" cryptoanalysts have painted a fat nipple directly is the face of my Mona Lisa. It could be adopted that this people will terminate to do their sacrileges. Futheron this is not desirable.

But what should one do if a development depends on an algorithm. The only way around this edge is to bank on a library that offers equivalent compensation.

By the way: In my point of view a block cipher that is running in CFB, OFB or CTR mode could never be an equivalent compensation for a stream cipher (if you want speed). Dwayne's statement that stream ciphers are still in an "experimental" state sounds in my (european) ears like a simple
misapprehension. For some reasons the Europeans are never leaving the "experimental" state of exactly nothing. Well, that's a part of our weakness but even a part of our power.

Stefan

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