Re: Can you crack this

Carlos Moreno wrote:
> chivalc@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
> > below is a sample of ciphertext and plain text. ...
> I don't think anyone in here would be interested in cracking such
> thing -- first of all, I'm sure it's an absolutely trivial thing
> (though I'm not willing to spend more than 5 seconds of my time
> looking at it), and second, if you don't provide an algorithm to
> be cracked, then *sci*.crypt is definitely the wrong place for
> your question.

It's not necessarily trivial - it seems to be some sort of hash
function, and some of those are hard to "crack". However,
it is true that we discourage posting challenges here (see
the sci.crypt FAQ). There are several reasons for that..

Note that the fellow couldn't post the algorithm since he
didn't know it. The lack of a priori knowledge of the
algorithm doesn't per se make it an illegitimate cryptanalytic
problem.

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Are natural languages secure ciphers?
    ... the algorithm isn't strong enough. ... >> produces ciphertext which is indistinguishable from random noise ... unknown to the linguistic community, it won't remain unknown that long. ... Paul Schlyter, Grev Turegatan 40, SE-114 38 Stockholm, SWEDEN ...
    (sci.crypt)
  • Re: newbie coding programmer...
    ... your description of the algorithm is in a widely understood form, ... People may analyse your algortihm for you out of curiosity, ... providing the ciphertext is largely irrelevant. ... you provided 42 non-whitespace characters. ...
    (sci.crypt)
  • Re: Please test this encryption
    ... the algorithm must remain secure even if the enemy ... What about the longer ciphertext? ... on my cracker program but your encryption program would be worthless. ...
    (sci.crypt)
  • Re: OK What do you need? was:Re: Please test this encryption
    ... > strong encryption can be broken with brute force methods. ... than key material and some idea of what the plaintext will look like) can be ... a short/single sample is sufficient to figure out an algorithm. ... show logically that a single ciphertext string is insufficient to determine ...
    (sci.crypt)
  • Re: A password problem
    ... but what if I don't have access to a strong algorithm? ... Alice is software written in PHP. ... As a matter of general theory, though, suppose I give you this ciphertext: ...
    (sci.crypt)