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There are a bunch of questions asking to evaluate the security of an amateur cipher, clearly without knowing pretty basic stuff on cryptography or how SE works. You all know the type of question I'm talking about. Since these questions are highly unlikely to be improved by the OP, for example, by restricting the scope or by demonstrating any type of preliminar analysis, I believe we should directly close them, as we already do with requests for deciphering blocks of data. Maybe this could be added to that close reason.

What do you think?

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  • $\begingroup$ Are you asking about how to properly close questions as of now (like M'vy explained) or are you asking for community consensus to add / change the site-specific off-topic close reasons (right now we have reference request, decipher a block of data and "ask on sec.se")? $\endgroup$
    – SEJPM
    Mar 30, 2016 at 12:26
  • $\begingroup$ Relevant: Vote for "Peer Reviews" as custom close reason… $\endgroup$
    – e-sushi
    Mar 31, 2016 at 10:17

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From : https://crypto.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic

Do we accept questions asking for cryptanalysis of your cipher (hash function, ...) design?

No, we do not. If you want peer review of your full cryptographic scheme, here is not the place to acquire it. However, you might like to break your problem down into specifics, such as "under these conditions, does structure X have desired security property Y?" which would be a perfect fit for us.

So: close as off-topic will do just fine.

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  • $\begingroup$ I already see this used as a close reason every now and then (especially by @e-sushi), but this is kindof a close reason through the back door because it basically is a fourth site-specific close reason "stealthified" as a comment and I guess the OP is asking whether we should change our site-specific off-topic close reasons. $\endgroup$
    – SEJPM
    Mar 30, 2016 at 12:25
  • $\begingroup$ @SEJPM Yes, that's what I'm talking about $\endgroup$
    – cygnusv
    Mar 30, 2016 at 13:05
  • $\begingroup$ @SEJPM Yep… ;) It’s simply one of the numerous pointers/hints I tend to leave as a comment when adding my close-vote to a basket because alike hints are one of those things that tend to motivate people to edit their questions. The default “off topic” message doesn’t seem to produce alike motivation. Yet, I’m not sure if we actually need this specific one as a close-reason… there are many others that might as well make sense. Good thing this is up to the community to decide. $\endgroup$
    – e-sushi
    Mar 30, 2016 at 21:08
  • $\begingroup$ Relevant: Vote for "Peer Reviews" as custom close reason… $\endgroup$
    – e-sushi
    Mar 31, 2016 at 10:17

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