Phil Smith wrote <begin extract> if I encrypt a ZIP file with DES (56 bit keystrength) and you believe it's a .doc file, you will cheerfully cruise right by the correct key, because you won't see the .doc signature you're expecting. </end extract>
and I have two comments. First. the professional cryptographers of my acquaintance avoid assumptions about the encodings of the encrypted documents they are examining. They regard this as an empirical question to be answered empirically, and they have powerful statistical methods for answering such questions available to them Second, the notion that "DES (56 bit key strength)" is adequate to any serious encryption task will delight the NSA, the Chinese, and others of that ilk. John Gilmore, Ashland, MA 01721 - USA ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
