T he aim of this dissertation is to show some cryptanalytical results on a selection of stream ciphers. We have grouped theory and results into three main parts. The first part focuses on the FCSR-based constructions X-FCSR and F-FCSRH v3. For the X-FCSR family of stream ciphers we perform a severe state recovery attack. This attack works for both X-FCSR-128 and X-FCSR-256. We then develop a ge...

In this article I trace the historical development of Peirce’s semiotic rhetoric from its early appearance as a sub-discipline of symbolistic to its mature incarnation as one of the three main branches of the science of semiotic, and argue that this change in status is a symptom of Peirce’s broadening semiotic interest. The article shows how the evolution of Peirce’s theory of signs is linked t...

How much time is needed to encrypt, authenticate, verify, and decrypt a packet? The answer depends on the machine (most importantly, but not solely, the CPU), on the choice of authenticatedencryption function, on the packet length, on the level of competition for the instruction cache, on the number of keys handled in parallel, et al. This paper reports, in graphical and tabular form, measureme...

Performance in hardware has been demonstrated to be an important factor in the evaluation of candidates for cryptographic standards. Up to now, no consensus exists on how such an evaluation should be performed in order to make it fair, transparent, practical, and acceptable for the majority of the cryptographic community. In this report, we formulate a proposal for a fair and comprehensive eval...

Giorgio Vasari argued that the polyvalent term disegno in the Cinquecento should unite the arts of painting, sculpture and architecture in the Accademia del Disegno. The nature of invention, or invenzione in the united arts, was not as united; it was not the same for architecture as it was for painting. Alberti, as is well known, argued for the status of painting to be a liberal art modelled on...