Just some random thoughts on cryptography and perl:
- Implementing cryptographic functions is hard and error prone - don't roll your own.
- Even if you use an existing, tested implementation of your favorite cypher - your setup might still be vulnerable (poor key setup, too few key changes, missing authentication, possible man-in-the-middle attacs, ...)
- Inventing new algorithms is even harder - don't do it, unless you are really into cryptography. Even if you're good at it, don't used it unless it has gone through peer review.
- Blowfish is designed to have a slow key setup, so that it's hard to do brute force key guessing. If you need fast key setup, use something else.
- crypt is intended to be a hash function, not a cypher (although the name suggests differently).
