Chris Jones:
>
> I have a naive question.
>
> While your brute force decryption is running, how do you determine you
> have found the "one key" and decide it's time to stop?
This is a valid question! Depending on the encryption system in use,
it cannot be answered satisfactorily. If a one-time pad is in use where
the key is as long as the encrypted document, it cannot be answered at
all. Even if one key reveals a "good looking" plaintext, the attacker
has no way to know whether this plaintext is the right one because other
keys lead to other valid looking plaintext. So in this regard, one-time
pads are the "perfect" encryption system. But unfortunately, it is not
feasible to use it for hard disk encryption, since nobody is able to
remember a passphrase of several gigabytes. :)
J.
--
People talking a foreign language are romantic and mysterious.
[Agree] [Disagree]
<http://www.slowlydownward.com/NODATA/data_enter2.html>
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