Re: RARC C++ code

From: Mrsjunecarey (mrsjunecarey@aol.com)
Date: 01/22/03 

From: mrsjunecarey@aol.com (Mrsjunecarey)
Date: 22 Jan 2003 13:29:48 GMT

Dear David,

>Well, I guess you'll have to decide whether your main goal is to find
>something emotionally satisfying and that You Like, or whether your main
>goal is to find something that maximizes the chances of being secure.

Well, when I wrote Caesarion, my goal was to find something secure.

And it's a well known fact that something which is simple has "less things to
go wrong" compared with something that is complicated.

Thus, I chose ARC4 in preference to Block Ciphers (which are complicated
beasts).

And when you use a good CSPRNG like ARC4 (or IBAA) with my Cipher-Packet
technique, the result is a Stream Cipher which is vastly more secure than a
Block Cipher (and which has a larger secret key space).

>Home-tweaked RC4 variants might achieve the former goal, but they're
>not going to help you reach the latter goal.
>

I've said this before in this thread. But for your benefit, I'll say it again.
I posted the code for RARC to see if any of you experts out there might find it
inspiring (due to its swap of two unknown positions).

Perhaps the concept behind RARC might inspire someone like Paul Crowley or Rick
Wash to develop a more secure variant or ARC4; i.e. people who have done a lot
more analysis of ARC4 than I have.

Cheers,
Robin 

--
http://www.rcarey.org

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