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Re^7: Calculating corruption

by CountZero (Bishop)
on Oct 22, 2014 at 11:57 UTC ( [id://1104675]=note: print w/replies, xml ) Need Help??


in reply to Re^6: Calculating corruption
in thread Calculating corruption

proper crypto would be pretty darn random if implemented right. i am no guru or anything, but i do know somethings about the cat and mouse game. the whole point of encrypting a message or a file is to make it look as a random stream of bytes as possible.
I do not now why you insist that an encrypted file must look like a random stream of bytes. I can encrypt any message you like in such a way that it becomes a bible quote or one of Shakekspeare's sonnets and it will be impossible to decrypt unless you have access to the key. And I really mean "impossible" not just millions of years with millions of supercomputers.
but yeah, to me, when crypto is implemented right, the stream of bits generated are pretty random, cz it would not be a good thing to be dependably predictable ;) at least not for this corporation anyway lol.
You are mixing up two things "random" and "dependably predictable". Even the best generators of a stream of pseudo-random numbers (which is the best you can get unless you resort to inherently random events, such as radio-active decay or a throw of dice) provide an entirely and dependably predictable sequence of bits. And yet, it are such "dependably predictable" sequences of bits that form the heart of many good encryption schemes.
and also like i said, the std dev of these files are all within a certain range and usually if they are off by 1 to 1.5%, then that usually means the file is corrupt. once i sit down and code the script to compute some statistics of said files, i will post a zip full of these files and you can try for yourself :)
I am not a cryptology specialist, but if all the files encrypted show within a small margin a statistical similarity, I would surely question the strength of this system. It are such "similarities" which give cryptologists their first "breaks" to defeat the encryption. Remember Enigma?

Of course, an encryption only has to be "good enough". In the army I have used such simple ecnryption systems for tactical messages that it would take anyone with more than 2 braincells only a few hours to decrypt it (or small Perl script, a few minutes). But when it was used for short messages only that would grow stale quickly, it was "good enough". By the time the enemy breaks the message, the information it was hiding would be next to useless to them anyhow.

CountZero

A program should be light and agile, its subroutines connected like a string of pearls. The spirit and intent of the program should be retained throughout. There should be neither too little or too much, neither needless loops nor useless variables, neither lack of structure nor overwhelming rigidity." - The Tao of Programming, 4.1 - Geoffrey James

My blog: Imperial Deltronics

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