From: Robert Coyote (coyyote@hotmail.com)
Date: Fri Sep 28 2001 - 17:02:07 MDT
Rubber hose decryption might decode this with astonishing efficiency, and if
not, sensory deprivation/rohypnol decryption may.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Harvey Newstrom" <mail@HarveyNewstrom.com>
To: <extropians@extropy.org>
Sent: Friday, September 28, 2001 3:07 PM
Subject: RE: Steganography
> Smigrodzki, Rafal wrote,
> > Harvey Newstrom wrote:
> > > Nothing is uncrackable these days, even with brute-force. Encryption
is
> a
> > > temporary solution at best.
> >
> > ### Here is a message from me: 17, 5, 15, 27, 47, 8, 54.
> > It is a message that can easily be decrypted by anybody who has the key,
> and the same key can be used > to encode a large number of messages,
without
> using any advanced cryptographic techniques.
> > I am perfectly sure that you, or anybody not informed about the exact
> cipher, will never be able to
> > decode the message, no matter how powerful your computer might someday
be.
>
>
>
> You really think this is uncrackable, don't you?
>
> Are you so confident that you would bet me a million dollars on it?
>
> Think hard about this before scrolling down!!!
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> OK... I am NOT betting a million dollars! (I don't think either of us
> could afford it!) I just wanted to see if you really thought this was an
> uncrackable code and not just a flippant example thrown out without much
> thought.
>
> This code may not be as perfect as you think.
>
> I assume that this is just a simple word replacement code. You took a
> common book or document, and replaced each word of your message with its
> position number from the document. Your first word is word #17 in the
> document. Your second word is #5 in the document. And so forth. If so,
> this is a classical code that was used in the Cold War. Such codes were
> frequently cracked by both sides. This is why they were discarded in
favor
> of modern encryption.
>
> Such codes are vulnerable to statistical analysis. If your messages are
in
> English, your most common word will be "the", the second most common word
> will be "and", the third "to", the fourth "of", and so forth. Other
> languages would have other statistical numbers for each of their words.
> Just applying these statistical probabilities to your messages will decode
> most of the words. The rare ones that don't decode could be determined by
> context, especially in the case of multiple instances. (Names and
locations
> may not decode since they are arbitrary labels and not part of the
language
> vocabulary.)
>
> If this direct approach didn't work, there is still the brute-force
method.
> Instead of searching for passwords in order or decryption keys in order,
> this brute-force search would go through a list of book and document
titles
> sorted in order of popularity. A fast server connected to an online
library
> on the Internet could grab the first 54 words of each document and try it
as
> the solution. If it could do this at a rate of one per second, it could
try
> 86,400 documents in the first day, 604,800 in the first week, 2,628,000 in
> the first month, and 31,536,000 in the first year. Using multiple
computers
> to split up the work could dramatically increase these numbers.
>
> So be honest... Was your message in English or some other natural
language
> that could be decoded by the statistical frequency of each word? If not,
> was your code book a common book likely to be found on the Internet such
> that a brute-force search would find it? Or, more specifically, if you
had
> bet me a million dollars could I have been planning my retirement?
>
> --
> Harvey Newstrom <www.HarveyNewstrom.com>
> Principal Security Consultant, Newstaff Inc. <www.Newstaff.com>
> Board of Directors, Extropy Institute <www.Extropy.org>
> Cofounder, Pro-Act <www.ProgressAction.org>
>
>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 08:11:02 MST