[6717] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: hiding plaintext
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (David A. Wagner)
Sun Mar 5 13:02:28 2000
To: cryptography@c2.net
From: daw@CS.Berkeley.EDU (David A. Wagner)
Date: 5 Mar 2000 09:12:08 -0800
Message-ID: <89u4h8$dis$1@blowfish.isaac.cs.berkeley.edu>
In article <14523.59590.40430.910966@desk.crynwr.com>,
Russell Nelson <nelson@crynwr.com> wrote:
> One could increase the difficulty of decryption by three or four
> doublings by intermixing random data with plaintext in a message.
If I understand correctly:
To double the cost of exhaustive keysearch with this method, you need
to double both the performance overhead and the bandwidth consumed.
But it seems to me that if you're willing to accept this type of hit,
there are much better techniques available. For example, double
encryption doubles only the performance overhead (no impact on
bandwidth) and seems likely to cost the attacker much more than
injecting random nulls into the plaintext.
