03-07-2004, 04:21 AM
Quote:``I just came up with this neat method of encryption. Here's some
ciphertext: FHDSIJOYW^&%$*#@OGBUJHKFSYUIRE. Is it strong?'' Without a
doubt questions like this are the most annoying traffic on sci.crypt.
If you have come up with an encryption scheme, providing some
ciphertext from it is not adequate. Nobody has ever been impressed by
random gibberish. Any new algorithm should be secure even if the
opponent knows the full algorithm (including how any message key is
distributed) and only the private key is kept secret. There are some
systematic and unsystematic ways to take reasonably long ciphertexts
and decrypt them even without prior knowledge of the algorithm, but
this is a time-consuming and possibly fruitless exercise which most
sci.crypt readers won't bother with.
Thats a quote on Net Etiquette for the google sci.crypt group