[ircmaxell]

Ok, you have me confused. I half want to raise the BS flag...

Could you explain something here? How can a block cipher that has 128 bits of output be attacked 8 bits at a time (where 1 bit change in the input will change on average 64 bits of the output in a non-predictable manner)? Sure, you can try every 8 bit permutation, but without knowing the form of the original text how can you know if you have a valid character? And how is that different from extracting "raw data" out of pure randomness (where the fallacy is obvious, you're extracting data that was never there)?

I'm genuinely interested, so if an email will do it, could you please follow up: ircmaxell [at] php [dot] net...

Thanks!

[tptacek]

If I sound smart about any of this stuff, alarm bells should be going off in your head, because in terms of testing and breaking crypto, I am a piker.

I think you get my point now. Maybe rethink the crypto stuff in your pledge.