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Article #3939Re: how do you tell encrytped data from random data?
From: Henry Schaffer
Date: Sun, 10 Jan 1988 02:22
Date: Sun, 10 Jan 1988 02:22
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These days it is quite common to compress text (and other files too.) The various compressions schemes such as Huffman encoding and Lempel- Ziv-Welch tend to even out (smooth out) the character distribution (i.e., they hope to maximize the information transmitted per character, or per byte). If this file is then encrypted, the smoothness may end up in the encrypted data. Conversly, random data need not have a smooth character distribution. (It is common to confuse "random" with "equi-probable". However, even though most examples given in courses of "random" are "equi-probable there is no necessary connection.) --henry schaffer n c state univ
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Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!mcnc!ecsvax!hes From: hes@ecsvax.UUCP (Henry Schaffer) Newsgroups: sci.crypt Subject: Re: how do you tell encrytped data from random data? Summary: character distribution of compressed data is smooth Message-ID: <4403@ecsvax.UUCP> Date: 10 Jan 88 02:22:25 GMT References: <660@bucket.UUCP> <6992@brl-smoke.ARPA> <1499@osiris.UUCP> Organization: NC State Univ. Lines: 14