
Bruno Buchberger’s algorithm: Gröbner bases and applications (1998) [pdf] - boshomi
https://www3.risc.jku.at/research/theorema/Groebner-Bases-Bibliography/gbbib_files/publication_428.pdf
======
reifyx
When doing some research for a final project about using Grobner bases for
cryptography, I came across an interesting paper titled aptly titled "Why You
Cannot Even Hope To Use Grobner Bases in Public-Key Cryptography: An Open
Letter to A Scientist Who Failed and a Challenge to Those Who Have Not Yet
Failed".

[[https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/aab4/9f22ed522d16111eca29ae...](https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/aab4/9f22ed522d16111eca29ae8d5f47323de258.pdf)]

Not only is this paper written in a very wry style not super common in math
papers (it is addressed to "Dear Deluded Author"), it seems all the authors
are pseudonyms: Boo Barkee, Deh Cac Can, Julia Ecks, Theo Moriarty, and R.F.
Ree. And it includes a large quote from Trithemius' (a 15th century occultist
who wrote several books on magic that were actually "encrypted" books on early
cryptography in disguise.) Steganographia in the abstract.

When I tried to do some research on this mysterious paper I couldn't really
find any references or explanations for who these people are, where they are
from, or why this wrote this paper. The only thing I could come up with is
"Boo Barkee" sounds a lot like "Bourbaki", the last name of a pseudonymous
group of French mathematicians
[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_Bourbaki](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_Bourbaki)].

All this to say, does anyone here know about this paper or who the authors
are? Why is it all so mysterious? Is there supposed to be hidden
steganography'd messages inside the paper itself? Are the other authors' names
also references?

As for my final project, I ended up not being able to figure out a way to use
Grobner bases for cryptography.

~~~
aidgodkart
“The name of Boo Barkee, who lived in Ithaca, NY, is known for several papers
he published alone (Barkee 1988) and with his colleagues (Barkee, Dennis, and
Wang 1990, Barkee, Can, Ecks, Moriarty, and Ree 1994). As one can read in the
work of Kreuzer and Robbiano (2005): [...] The truth is that Boo Barkee was a
dog belonging to Moss Sweedler, who while writing his paper on cryptography
decided to use his dog’s name as a pseudonym. At least two of Barkee’s
coauthors were using fake names too: Deh Cac Can was a pen name of D.
Naccache, and Theo Moriarty was in fact Teo Mora. Julia Ecks and Richard
Francis Ree have not disclosed their identities” —
[https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00283-017-9763-...](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00283-017-9763-5)

~~~
reifyx
Thanks for the reference. Haven't looked into this in a few years, cool to see
something has shown up about it now. I guess Sweedler was just having some fun
then?

Still curious about the Trithemius quote and if it has any particular
relevance to the paper.

------
NotOscarWilde
Any context for why it appeared just now?

On a personal note, it is almost eerie that it appeared just as I finished a
week in Chile at a workshop [1] looking into Buchberger's algorithm and the
connections between Gröbner bases and bit complexity of proofs via sums of
squares [2, 3].

[1]: [https://sites.google.com/view/vverdugo/events/hierarchies-
an...](https://sites.google.com/view/vverdugo/events/hierarchies-and-
symmetries-2019?authuser=0)

[2]: [https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~odonnell/papers/sos-
automatizability...](https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~odonnell/papers/sos-
automatizability.pdf)

[3]: [https://arxiv.org/abs/1702.05139](https://arxiv.org/abs/1702.05139)

