| From: | Paul Hill |
| Date: | 2 Aug 2000 at 15:02:43 |
| Subject: | Re: Programming encryption (poss OT) |
Adam Bell wrote:
>
> Hi Paul,
>
> > It can be. The trick is to not use FF but a pseudo-random sequence
> generated
> > from a password. If this sequence is long enough (say 2^128) then
> the
> > encryption is very good.
> >
> > This is pretty much how the best encryption schemes work.
> >
>
> I was using a random key, but can you elaborate on the generation
> from a password.
Hmmm..... Well, you could use the password as a seed to a random number style
function. Random numbers on computers are not usually random. They usually
loop around after so many numbers. I guess you could multiply all the ascii
values together (introducing a multiplier at each stage) but I'm sure there is
a more elegant way.
I don't really know a huge amount this kind of thing, but it's something that
interests me. Perhaps you could look for a webpage on encryption.
Something I found the other day was a webpage describing how it's possible to
encode data into pictures without obvious any loss of quality/detail in the
picture.
I think encryption (not just PGP, that's been done) would make an interesting
future article for AA, especially considering what the UK government is trying
to do at the moment.
Quote carefully and read all ADMIN:README mails