Hi all,
I am pretty new to the subject so if I write sth stupid just point it
out to me loud... I want to encrypt chunks of data that include ascii
character. So it's not plain text but rather a binary stream. My
question is whether an algorithm like AES is efficient and what
problems I may face.
thanks a lot
-- dimitris
In article <1191506453.632349.193640@n39g2000hsh.googlegroups.com>,
jma
>I am pretty new to the subject so if I write sth stupid just point it
>out to me loud... I want to encrypt chunks of data that include ascii
>character. So it's not plain text but rather a binary stream. My
>question is whether an algorithm like AES is efficient and what
>problems I may face.
Discussions about the relative efficiencies of various cryptography
algorithms are probably best referred to sci.crypt .
If efficiency is your main concern, then use NES instead of AES.
NES (NULL Encryption Standard) is as efficient as you can possibly
get, and can be easily written in a one or two lines of code:
just copy the input buffer to the output buffer unchanged.
If that doesn't sound quite as secure as you would like, then chances
are that you are willing to give up at least a -little- bit of
efficiency for the sake of security. If so, then you should start
asking yourself how *much* security you need, and what kind of
events you are attempting to secure against, and how much inefficiency
you are willing to put up with to achieve that level of security.
AES is considered to be fairly efficient for the level and
variety of security it gives you -- but it might not be the
appropriate level of security for you, and the drawbacks of it
might not be acceptable in your situation.
In article <1191506453.632349.193640@n39g2000hsh.googlegroups.com>,
jma
> Hi all,
>
> I am pretty new to the subject so if I write sth stupid just point it
> out to me loud... I want to encrypt chunks of data that include ascii
> character. So it's not plain text but rather a binary stream. My
> question is whether an algorithm like AES is efficient and what
> problems I may face.
Most of the standard encryption algorithms don't care whether the input
data is text or binary. It's just raw data.
--
Barry Margolin, barmar@alum.mit.edu
Arlington, MA
*** PLEASE post questions in newsgroups, not directly to me ***
*** PLEASE don't copy me on replies, I'll read them in the group ***
On Oct 5, 8:36 am, Barry Margolin wrote:
>
> jma
> > Hi all,
>
> > I am pretty new to the subject so if I write sth stupid just point it
> > out to me loud... I want to encrypt chunks of data that include ascii
> > character. So it's not plain text but rather a binary stream. My
> > question is whether an algorithm like AES is efficient and what
> > problems I may face.
>
> Most of the standard encryption algorithms don't care whether the input
> data is text or binary. It's just raw data.
>
> --
Hi Barry,
I thought so, but since I've found no literature or examples for binary
+text data I wanted to make sure that I don't miss a pitfall. Thanks a
lot!
-- dimitris
On Oct 4, 9:13 pm, rober...@hushmail.com (Walter Roberson) wrote:
> In article <1191506453.632349.193...@n39g2000hsh.googlegroups.com>,
>
> jma
> >I am pretty new to the subject so if I write sth stupid just point it
> >out to me loud... I want to encrypt chunks of data that include ascii
> >character. So it's not plain text but rather a binary stream. My
> >question is whether an algorithm like AES is efficient and what
> >problems I may face.
>
> Discussions about the relative efficiencies of various cryptography
> algorithms are probably best referred to sci.crypt .
>
> If efficiency is your main concern, then use NES instead of AES.
> NES (NULL Encryption Standard) is as efficient as you can possibly
> get, and can be easily written in a one or two lines of code:
> just copy the input buffer to the output buffer unchanged.
>
> If that doesn't sound quite as secure as you would like, then chances
> are that you are willing to give up at least a -little- bit of
> efficiency for the sake of security. If so, then you should start
> asking yourself how *much* security you need, and what kind of
> events you are attempting to secure against, and how much inefficiency
> you are willing to put up with to achieve that level of security.
>
> AES is considered to be fairly efficient for the level and
> variety of security it gives you -- but it might not be the
> appropriate level of security for you, and the drawbacks of it
> might not be acceptable in your situation.
A general question ... are you from Microsoft?
I am asking you this question because you have spoken line a true MS
techie but provided no help at all to the poor soul who asked the
question.
Dash wrote:
> On Oct 4, 9:13 pm, rober...@hushmail.com (Walter Roberson) wrote:
>> In article <1191506453.632349.193...@n39g2000hsh.googlegroups.com>,
>>
>> jma
>>> I am pretty new to the subject so if I write sth stupid just point it
>>> out to me loud... I want to encrypt chunks of data that include ascii
>>> character. So it's not plain text but rather a binary stream. My
>>> question is whether an algorithm like AES is efficient and what
>>> problems I may face.
>> Discussions about the relative efficiencies of various cryptography
>> algorithms are probably best referred to sci.crypt .
>>
>> If efficiency is your main concern, then use NES instead of AES.
>> NES (NULL Encryption Standard) is as efficient as you can possibly
>> get, and can be easily written in a one or two lines of code:
>> just copy the input buffer to the output buffer unchanged.
>>
>> If that doesn't sound quite as secure as you would like, then chances
>> are that you are willing to give up at least a -little- bit of
>> efficiency for the sake of security. If so, then you should start
>> asking yourself how *much* security you need, and what kind of
>> events you are attempting to secure against, and how much inefficiency
>> you are willing to put up with to achieve that level of security.
>>
>> AES is considered to be fairly efficient for the level and
>> variety of security it gives you -- but it might not be the
>> appropriate level of security for you, and the drawbacks of it
>> might not be acceptable in your situation.
>
> A general question ... are you from Microsoft?
> I am asking you this question because you have spoken line a true MS
> techie but provided no help at all to the poor soul who asked the
> question.
I'd say he gave him the right advice quite nicely:
- He shall make up his mind about his demands, concretely formulate them and
then ask again (if the answer doesn't already jump into his face immediately).
- If you don't know what cipher to take: Simply use AES.
On Tue, 23 Oct 2007, in the Usenet newsgroup comp.security.misc, in article
<1193195226.614239.245100@i38g2000prf.googlegroups.com>, Dash wrote:
>A general question ... are you from Microsoft?
Well, you _are_ posting from a search engine instead of the news
server your ISP provides, so you really could use that to attempt to
find out. I know that the short strings to the right of the '@' sign
in a posting address are hard to figure out, but if you REALLY put your
mind to it, you might discover he works for a Canadian government
scientific research organization, though like most of us he's not
speaking officially or unofficially for that organization.
>I am asking you this question because you have spoken line a true
>MS techie but provided no help at all to the poor soul who asked
>the question.
In other words, you haven't a clue about Usenet, and couldn't figure
out the first sentence of the reply, where he referred the O/P to the
group 'sci.crypt'.
Usenet comes from a service invented at the University of North Carolina
back in 1980 - about a year before your heros at microsoft invented the
computer or what-ever they claim now. It's not the "web" which was
invented at CERN in Switzerland in roughly 1990, although for the past
ten years you've been able to use a web server to access Usenet.
If you put the letters 'sci.crypt' into the "Search For" window in the
search engine you are using now, the first thing that turns up is
Web Results 1 - 10 of about 140,000 for sci.crypt. (0.21 seconds)
Discussions - sci.crypt | Google Groups
sci . crypt. Discussions · + new post · About this group · Subscribe to
this group. This is a Usenet group - learn more ...
groups.google.com/group/sci.crypt - 42k - Cached - Similar pages
Now that actual newsgroup probably won't be of much use to you, because
the last time I looked they were using technical words like 'mathematics'
and 'probability' but the short description of that group is
sci.crypt Different methods of data en/decryption.
just as the short description of this Usenet group is
comp.security.misc Security issues of computers and networks.
If all you can do it click on some icon and hope that it does something
good, neither group is likely to interesting.
Old guy
In article
Moe Trin
>On Tue, 23 Oct 2007, in the Usenet newsgroup comp.security.misc, in article
><1193195226.614239.245100@i38g2000prf.googlegroups.com>, Dash wrote:
>>A general question ... are you from Microsoft?
>Well, you _are_ posting from a search engine instead of the news
>server your ISP provides, so you really could use that to attempt to
>find out. I know that the short strings to the right of the '@' sign
>in a posting address are hard to figure out, but if you REALLY put your
>mind to it, you might discover he works for a Canadian government
>scientific research organization, though like most of us he's not
>speaking officially or unofficially for that organization.
To be fair to Dash: I was posting from a personal account, not
from my work email. On the other hand, the 50-some-odd thousand
google hits on my name would locate my workplace pretty quickly.
In article <1193195226.614239.245100@i38g2000prf.googlegroups.com>,
Dash
>On Oct 4, 9:13 pm, rober...@hushmail.com (Walter Roberson) wrote:
>> efficiency for the sake of security. If so, then you should start
>> asking yourself how *much* security you need, and what kind of
>> events you are attempting to secure against, and how much inefficiency
>> you are willing to put up with to achieve that level of security.
>A general question ... are you from Microsoft?
>I am asking you this question because you have spoken line a true MS
>techie but provided no help at all to the poor soul who asked the
>question.
Microsoft: "Where do you want to go today?"
Me: "What the heck are you trying to do today?!"