[arachne] Re: password encryption
- From: "Samuel W. Heywood" <sheywood@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: arachne@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 30 Oct 2009 23:07:03 -0400
Arachne at FreeLists---The Arachne Fan Club!
On Fri, 2009-10-30 at 18:50 -0500, Rob wrote:
> Arachne at FreeLists---The Arachne Fan Club!
>
> Hey, Sam
> By stacked I mean the process of encrypting a file or drive with
> one method of encryption, then encrypting the encrypted file or
> drive with another method of encryption, and then another. Kinda
> like locking your door with the door lock, then a deadbolt, then
> a crossbrace. Makes it much harder for some jerk to decipher, or
> breakin to your file or drive.
> I went to the Nettamer site to checkout the Kaos engine. It seems
> it has not been updated since 1996. Any method, algorithm, or
> cipher from that time period would be very weak and useless by
> today's standards, providing very minimal security. I'm sure there's
> some school kids that could figure a way to crack it.
> Rob
>
> On Fri, 30 Oct 2009, Samuel W. Heywood wrote:
> >
> > When I was speaking of the type of encryption currently in use by
> > the US Government, I might have had DES confused with some other
> > type of encryption program.
> >
> > Please explain what you mean what you mean by encryption that is
> > "stacked". Are you referring to encrypting some plaintext and then
> > encrypting again the resulting cyphertext?
> >
> > BTW, have you taken a look at the "Kaos encryption engine"? It is
> > an encryption program offered for free download at one of the web
> > pages at the Nettamer web site: http://www.nettamer.net. Kaos is
> > a DOS program. Other than from info available at the Nettamer web
> > site, I don't have any info on how strong the encryption is with
> > the Kaos engine.
> >
> > If anyone here has some additional info about the kaos encryption
> > engine please let me know.
> >
> > Sam Heywood
I know of one method of encryption that has been in use for several
centuries, and which is still in use today by many different governments
for doing their top secret communications. That method is the "one-time-
pad" system, in which each of the communicators have duplicate pads of
random letters, each sheet of paper in the pad being an almost endless
key, and each sheet of paper being different. Above the lines of random
letters the communicators encrypt and decrypt messages by using a
trigraph, 26 columns by 26 rows, each column and row being a character
of the alphabet. With this system, a sheet of paper on the one-time-pad
is used only once for each message. This type of encryption is, in
theory, impossible to crack unless the one-time-pads are compromised, or
unless the code breakers have gleaned some info from other sources as
to some specifics concerning what the secret communications are all
about, and they know some words and phrases a decoded version would most
likely contain. (For example, in the case of the first message sent
from a field commander to his commanding general on a day which happens
to be the commanding general's birthday, it would be a pretty good guess
that part of the decoded version of the message would contain the phrase
"happy birthday"). If the code breakers know about stuff like that and
and if they know a whole lot more, then they can put some banks of
computers to work and let them run for several weeks, months, or years
until the computers can come up with some meaningful rendition of an
encoded message, a meaningful rendition that makes sense.
Sam Heywood
Arachne at FreeLists
-- Arachne, The Premier GPL Web Browser/Suite for DOS --
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