The paper about the new WinZip 9.0 AES encryption security problems does of course mention our old friends Alice and Bob, used in almost every example of a cryptographic system, but also a new adversary, Mallory. According to this, it seems that Mallory (a manipulator) is used in place of Eve (an eavesdropper) when it’s desirable to distinguish between these roles. I know I’ve read several examples of Eve being able to manipulate messages, but anyway… That explaination led me to this page, which I’ve read before, but it contains my favorite cryptology quote ever, so I’m afraid I’ll have to repeat it here:
From ”The Alice and Bob after-dinner speech”:
Against all odds, over a noisy telephone line, tapped by the tax authorities and the secret police, Alice will happily attempt, with someone she doesn’t trust, whom she cannot hear clearly, and who is probably someone else, to fiddle her tax returns and to organise a coup d’etat, while at the same time minimising the cost of the phone call.
A coding theorist is someone who doesn’t think Alice is crazy.
