Eric Hughes writes:
It has also been examined by four cryptologists (professional and/or credentialed) not involved in its development, and it was ridiculed by none of them.
I hear the sounds of autonecrothaphty (digging one's own grave). Was it recommended by any of them, and did any of the test it?
It's true I'm going out on a limb here, but the potential benefit to the world is a new cryptosystem of some value (a deliberately modest claim). And one that was not designed by NSA complete with trapdoors. Anything new always meets with resistance. The description was run by the cryptanalysts for their comment. The consensus was that the method was probably strong, or at least not obviously weak, but that they had insufficient information to judge properly. You may disagree. You may not like the proposed method, but the real question is whether it works. In-house testing has been as rigorous as we can make it, but any outside cryptanalyst is welcome to take a shot at it.
The first task of a cryptanalyst is to discover what method of encryption was used.
Usually not. This often comes as collateral information related to the intercept. In the case of a PC seizure, having a manual lying around and an executable on the disk usually qualifies.
Yes, a cryptanalyst looks around for other evidence as to which cryptosystem was used before the hard work of analysing ciphertext. As you say, it may be a manual or an exmcttable. The encipherer himself may reveal it. But in any case, identifying the encryption method *is* the first step in cryptanalysis.