From: Eliezer Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Mon Dec 30 1996 - 16:11:32 MST
> 2) In an algorithm that is large, complex and messy, it's very easy to make a
> blunder. When you add yet another wheel within a wheel you may think you're
> making it more secure, but you may be doing the opposite, it's hard to
> know how the change will react with all the other parts of a very messy
> algorithm. You may have actually have created a small hole in the system
> through which an attacker can extract a little piece of information,
> information he shouldn't have, information he can use to expand the hole
> until he can drive a truck through it.
In the German "Enigma", they added a little "improvement" which made it
impossible for any letter to be encoded as itself. That, essentially,
is how the Allies cracked it.
--
sentience@pobox.com Eliezer S. Yudkowsky
http://tezcat.com/~eliezer/singularity.html
http://tezcat.com/~eliezer/algernon.html
Disclaimer: Unless otherwise specified, I'm not telling you
everything I think I know.
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