🚀 go-pugleaf

ranck@vtserf.cc.vt.edu (Wm. L. Ranck) writes:

>   I saw a preview of "Sneakers" when I was at the movies about a week ago.
>In a couple of scenes they showed groups of letters on a screen rapidly
>changing (sort of like a slot machine) and resolving into words.  Now this
>bothered me.  The space characters were already in place!  In other words
>it was obvious from the cyphertext what the length of each word was.
>Pretty poor encryption scheme that.

The average person knows *nothing* about encryption. About 7-10 years ago
a local BBS was essentially one continuing series "round-robin" stories. 
Some folks (most of whom are on the Internet now!) were doing one that
was a cross between computer hacker stuff and spy stories. We decided to
use some *simple* ciphers on messages. 90% of the poeople who said that
they'd have "no trouble" reading them couldn't crack a simple Caesar
cipher (done in standard 5 character groups). "Where are the words?"

We lost another 90% with a simple change to a polyalphabetic cipher with
a fixed key. Changing to a key that changed according to a known (to us)
paterrn lost all but two of them. 

We finally achieved security when we switched to bitwise encryption.
It was an interesting excercise. Especially in seeing how few people
could "crack" a code when given *broad* hints!



just for old times sake.....

RYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRY
JQWST HBAMQ VB@SR EJPPF ^\CEN IPWHZ KVLUY PZBRF NIWVZ NQ@IE PV\HB MLEQT 
PZKNL UYGRC HJATE EF]CA NQZWF HCRLU XF^\S TNLPF ^[Q@N QTFJH CPNIW VN\SE 
NMYR@ [[FDA \V^]K RDATV \YSIM QZGDX KTMEW V\HCI MYZF^ HCTMA RPZBR CM]VW 
@]KTL UYB@X [OMUV WJ[SI NQ\R@ XKRLT PGDYK QNURW F]CEL PW@ZB PMAID RN]SE 
DATV\ YSIMQ ZGDXK TLURB @QSIL QWV\Y KTEXP DB[SD DADR@ Z[NM] [R@]C HLEZB 
@\[EN YRWDX KLDAW VLHCY M]ZR@ XKRLT PFB]@ MAITV Z\CON IZFB[ STDAD V\]CE 
NIWFJ ]A@NM TWHYK SEXP@ ZBPMA IRV\Y A@NQY FB[SS MUTWF \[IM] W@ZBP 
RYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRY

:-)

-- 
Leonard Erickson		      leonard@qiclab.scn.rain.com
CIS: [70465,203]			 70465.203@compuserve.com
FIDO:   1:105/51	 Leonard.Erickson@f51.n105.z1.fidonet.org
(The CIS & Fido addresses are preferred)