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Encryption

daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Kevin M Bealer)
Sun Jul 14 15:04:51 1996

Date: 	Sun, 14 Jul 1996 00:35:04 -0400 (EDT)
From: Kevin M Bealer <kmb203@psu.edu>
To: linux-net@vger.rutgers.edu

I had a wierd idea for encryption -- Wouldn't it be possible albeit slow to
transmit encrypted data in the "magic number" of a TCP packet?  This is
supposed to be a random number in all regards, but I was thinking if you had
completely random-looking encrypted data you could slip it through
undetected.  Since these must be present in every packet, and must be
preserved to detect network loops (am I right about this?), not only could
you not tell what the information was, it would be impossible to detect
_whether_ it was being done.  

Of course (ideally) to do this you want a completely random pad as large as
the amount of transferred data, to prevent predictability of the sequence,
and you would need a copy of this on both ends ahead of time.

Also it would be very slow, especially with a large MTU.  But then you would
only want this kind of invisibility with very sensitive situations anyway.

Am I wrong about this, do packets get repackaged at firewalls or anything?


__kmb203@psu.edu_________________________Debian__1.1___Linux__2.0.5___
"Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra and then suddenly it
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