From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=0.1 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,FORGED_GMAIL_RCVD, FREEMAIL_FROM,HK_RANDOM_FROM autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 Path: eternal-september.org!reader01.eternal-september.org!reader02.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!mx02.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Denis McMahon Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: The enormous potential that programming LaTeX in Ada presents. Date: Wed, 3 Dec 2014 14:24:07 +0000 (UTC) Organization: A noiseless patient Spider Message-ID: References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Injection-Date: Wed, 3 Dec 2014 14:24:07 +0000 (UTC) Injection-Info: mx02.eternal-september.org; posting-host="66ffcfa4470a58bcddbdcd1913f98ab4"; logging-data="1093"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX18kYGUxWYCX0QyfVAPGG6vS+PXu6Vxy0Mk=" User-Agent: Pan/0.136 (I'm far too busy being delicious; GIT 926a150 git://git.gnome.org/pan2) Cancel-Lock: sha1:u4XRz+D5M4ezp8NIXh3yx0e9fAQ= Xref: news.eternal-september.org comp.lang.ada:23837 Date: 2014-12-03T14:24:07+00:00 List-Id: On Tue, 02 Dec 2014 03:57:04 -0800, Austin Obyrne wrote: > Latex is a typesetting language that can be encrypted by an Ada program > and then securely decrypted back to its LaTeX input file format at the > receiving end. A competent encryption / decryption system can encrypt and decrypt any stream of data, which is to say any arbitrarily long sequence of bits, in other words any file. The format of the input file should be irrelevant, if the format of the input file is not irrelevant the first attack vector is that you know that the decrypted data has a specific format, and you look for clues in the ciphertext that might relate to the format of the input file. So, it should not matter whether your plaintext is 7 bit ascii, a picture, a compressed zip archive of the cia's darkest secrets or Malia Obamas twitter account, if you run these through a good encryption algorithm an attacker should be unable to tell, even in possession of the encryption and decryption algorithms, what the format of the source data was, or even how long it was (but it's reasonable to deduce it's no longer than the ciphertext). You seem convinced that your technique is in some way much more inherently secure than anything that has gone before. This presumes that there is some flaw in all that has gone before that you can not only prove mathematically, but can prove by demonstrating an infallible attack on the ciphertext to generate the plaintext. If this is indeed the case, I am sure there are many publications queueing up to publish your paper demonstrating the fallibility of currently adopted encryption systems. Perhaps instead of trying to invent a totally new encryption method, you should concentrate on alerting people to the flaws in the existing system, and then you could present your system as the solution to the problem when asked "ok, you've proved the current algorithms are broken, how do we fix them?" -- Denis McMahon, denismfmcmahon@gmail.com