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What can an attacker see in an encrypted message?

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  What can an attacker see in an encrypted message? "Anonymous Remailer (austria)" <mixmaster@remailer.privacy.at> - 2015-10-05 14:02 +0200
    Re: What can an attacker see in an encrypted message? Richard Heathfield <rjh@cpax.org.uk> - 2015-10-05 13:39 +0100
    Re: What can an attacker see in an encrypted message? Paulo Marques <pmarques@grupopie.com> - 2015-10-05 14:19 +0100
    Re: What can an attacker see in an encrypted message? William Unruh <unruh@invalid.ca> - 2015-10-05 20:46 +0000
    Re: What can an attacker see in an encrypted message? Robert Wessel <robertwessel2@yahoo.com> - 2015-10-05 22:39 -0500
      Re: What can an attacker see in an encrypted message? Jakob Bohm <jb-usenet@wisemo.com> - 2015-10-06 08:01 +0200
        Re: What can an attacker see in an encrypted message? PA7PTL <PA7PTL@panteltje.com> - 2015-10-06 07:07 +0000
          Re: What can an attacker see in an encrypted message? Ben Bacarisse <ben.usenet@bsb.me.uk> - 2015-10-06 11:22 +0100
            Re: What can an attacker see in an encrypted message? eugene.styer@gmail.com - 2015-10-06 08:48 -0700
      Re: What can an attacker see in an encrypted message? Richard Heathfield <rjh@cpax.org.uk> - 2015-10-06 10:15 +0100
    Re: What can an attacker see in an encrypted message? Jeffrey Goldberg <nobody@goldmark.org> - 2015-10-06 11:22 -0500
      Re: What can an attacker see in an encrypted message? Jakob Bohm <jb-usenet@wisemo.com> - 2015-10-06 20:12 +0200
        Re: What can an attacker see in an encrypted message? Jeffrey Goldberg <nobody@goldmark.org> - 2015-10-07 19:21 -0500
          Re: What can an attacker see in an encrypted message? Richard Heathfield <rjh@cpax.org.uk> - 2015-10-08 06:33 +0100
            Re: What can an attacker see in an encrypted message? Jeffrey Goldberg <nobody@goldmark.org> - 2015-10-08 22:21 -0500
              Re: What can an attacker see in an encrypted message? Richard Heathfield <rjh@cpax.org.uk> - 2015-10-09 07:34 +0100
    Re: What can an attacker see in an encrypted message? Anonymous <anonymous@foto.nl1.torservers.net> - 2015-10-07 09:20 -0400

#32581 — What can an attacker see in an encrypted message?

After seeing all of the cryptanalysis on the ng recently it occurs 
to me to ask, just how much can an attacker figure out from a 
ciphertext? What if he or she has some of the passphrase? Here I'm 
talking about a ciphertext created using one of the algorithms 
available in gpg.

Let's say, purely for example, that the passphrase is the ever 
powerful "qwertyuiop" that's been brought up here.

If the attacker has figured out that "qwer" is a part of the 
passphrase can that attacker read any of the ciphertext? If so, how 
much? Does that knowledge of some of the passphrase allow the 
attacker to figure out the rest of it?

And, pretty much on this same subject, could an attacker tell what 
kind of data is encrypted in a file? Can they tell if it's a binary 
or a plaintext file that's encrypted?

Can they tell much about the contents of the ciphertext at all 
without having part of the passphrase, or a part of the session key?

Could the attacker figure out a frequency of characters, or tell 
that some particular characters are used in a ciphertext without 
having the passphrase or session key?

Would a nation state attacker be able to figure out much from a 
ciphertext created using one of the algorithms available in gpg?

Paranoid in Palookaville

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#32582

[In almost every paragraph of this reply, I found myself writing "if 
it's a strong cipher", so I edited out all those references. Please take 
it as read.]

On 05/10/15 13:02, Anonymous Remailer (austria) wrote:
> After seeing all of the cryptanalysis on the ng recently it occurs
> to me to ask, just how much can an attacker figure out from a
> ciphertext? What if he or she has some of the passphrase? Here I'm
> talking about a ciphertext created using one of the algorithms
> available in gpg.

Every bit of the passphrase will affect around half the bits of the 
ciphertext, so having some of the passphrase is likely to be of little 
help other than to reduce the search space for the rest of the passphrase.

> Let's say, purely for example, that the passphrase is the ever
> powerful "qwertyuiop" that's been brought up here.
>
> If the attacker has figured out that "qwer" is a part of the
> passphrase can that attacker read any of the ciphertext? If so, how
> much? Does that knowledge of some of the passphrase allow the
> attacker to figure out the rest of it?

Well, it certainly can't hurt! Of course, it depends on the algorithm. A 
one-bit difference in the key can affect as many as half the bits of the 
ciphertext. So knowing 32 bits ("qwer") out of 80 ("qwertyuiop") is 
nice, but not sufficient in itself, at least not in that way. On the 
other hand, it reduces the search space from 2^80 to 2^48, which may 
well bring it into the realms of practical brute force.

> And, pretty much on this same subject, could an attacker tell what
> kind of data is encrypted in a file? Can they tell if it's a binary
> or a plaintext file that's encrypted?

No, for the same reason as given above.

> Can they tell much about the contents of the ciphertext at all
> without having part of the passphrase, or a part of the session key?

No.

> Could the attacker figure out a frequency of characters, or tell
> that some particular characters are used in a ciphertext without
> having the passphrase or session key?

No.

> Would a nation state attacker be able to figure out much from a
> ciphertext created using one of the algorithms available in gpg?

Ha! That depends on whether they've found a practical attack for the 
algorithm in question, and that information is classified, which means 
we don't know either way.

-- 
Richard Heathfield
Email: rjh at cpax dot org dot uk
"Usenet is a strange place" - dmr 29 July 1999
Sig line 4 vacant - apply within

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#32583

On 05-10-2015 13:02, Anonymous Remailer (austria) wrote:
> After seeing all of the cryptanalysis on the ng recently it occurs
> to me to ask, just how much can an attacker figure out from a
> ciphertext? What if he or she has some of the passphrase? Here I'm
> talking about a ciphertext created using one of the algorithms
> available in gpg.

I'm just adding to Richard's reply here because I don't think he 
stressed some of these points enough.

The cyphers we have been toying with here in sci.crypt are just that: 
toy cyphers. They are good for an amateur cryptographer to spend a few 
hours trying to break them, but aren't good for anything else.

On a decent cypher, like AES, if you are trying out random keys and test 
a key that has 127 out of 128 bits correct (i.e., has a single bit 
wrong), you still end up with random garbage as the output.

So you either get the key completely right or it's just wrong, and any 
wrong key should be just as bad as another, no matter how many bits are 
wrong.

-- 
Paulo Marques - www.grupopie.com

"'thinking outside the box' works better if I know what's inside the box."

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#32598

On 2015-10-05, Anonymous Remailer (austria) <mixmaster@remailer.privacy.at> wrote:
>
> After seeing all of the cryptanalysis on the ng recently it occurs 
> to me to ask, just how much can an attacker figure out from a 
> ciphertext? What if he or she has some of the passphrase? Here I'm 
> talking about a ciphertext created using one of the algorithms 
> available in gpg.

AFAIK the answer is no. Ie, knowedge of part of the key does not
decrypt part of the answer (The "sequential cracking" one sees in movies
does not work). Otherwise cracking would be really easy. It would scale
essentially like the length of the key rather than like exponential in
the length of the key.

>
> Let's say, purely for example, that the passphrase is the ever 
> powerful "qwertyuiop" that's been brought up here.
>
> If the attacker has figured out that "qwer" is a part of the 
> passphrase can that attacker read any of the ciphertext? If so, how 
> much? Does that knowledge of some of the passphrase allow the 
> attacker to figure out the rest of it?

It makes bute force that much easier. Firstly they would try the ture
passphrase, since it would seem be part of the pattern. But even if they
had to try every letter of the rest of the phrase, it would shorten the
search from 26^10 to 26^6 assuming they knew the phrase was only lower
case letters from a-z. Of not, it is 256^10 to 256^8

>
> And, pretty much on this same subject, could an attacker tell what 
> kind of data is encrypted in a file? Can they tell if it's a binary 
> or a plaintext file that's encrypted?
>
> Can they tell much about the contents of the ciphertext at all 
> without having part of the passphrase, or a part of the session key?
>
> Could the attacker figure out a frequency of characters, or tell 
> that some particular characters are used in a ciphertext without 
> having the passphrase or session key?
>
> Would a nation state attacker be able to figure out much from a 
> ciphertext created using one of the algorithms available in gpg?
>
> Paranoid in Palookaville
>

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#32599

On Mon,  5 Oct 2015 14:02:46 +0200 (CEST), "Anonymous Remailer
(austria)" <mixmaster@remailer.privacy.at> wrote:

>
>After seeing all of the cryptanalysis on the ng recently it occurs 
>to me to ask, just how much can an attacker figure out from a 
>ciphertext? What if he or she has some of the passphrase? Here I'm 
>talking about a ciphertext created using one of the algorithms 
>available in gpg.
>
>Let's say, purely for example, that the passphrase is the ever 
>powerful "qwertyuiop" that's been brought up here.
>
>If the attacker has figured out that "qwer" is a part of the 
>passphrase can that attacker read any of the ciphertext? If so, how 
>much? Does that knowledge of some of the passphrase allow the 
>attacker to figure out the rest of it?
>
>And, pretty much on this same subject, could an attacker tell what 
>kind of data is encrypted in a file? Can they tell if it's a binary 
>or a plaintext file that's encrypted?
>
>Can they tell much about the contents of the ciphertext at all 
>without having part of the passphrase, or a part of the session key?
>
>Could the attacker figure out a frequency of characters, or tell 
>that some particular characters are used in a ciphertext without 
>having the passphrase or session key?
>
>Would a nation state attacker be able to figure out much from a 
>ciphertext created using one of the algorithms available in gpg?


One thing to add to what the others are saying, is that without
padding, one thing that you *can* see in an encrypted message is its
length.  So if you know Alice regularly sends Bob a message that says
"all quiet on the western front", and you suddenly see a message that
isn't 30 bytes long, you can assume something is happening that Alice
is reporting to Bob.  The very existence, and frequency, of traffic is
also an indicator, as is who's communicating, even if you can't read
the messages.

Merely encrypting the message so that it cannot be read does not mean
you aren't leaking information to an adversary - it's just not the
*contents* of the message.

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#32600

On 06/10/2015 05:39, Robert Wessel wrote:
> On Mon,  5 Oct 2015 14:02:46 +0200 (CEST), "Anonymous Remailer
> (austria)" <mixmaster@remailer.privacy.at> wrote:
>
>>
>> After seeing all of the cryptanalysis on the ng recently it occurs
>> to me to ask, just how much can an attacker figure out from a
>> ciphertext? What if he or she has some of the passphrase? Here I'm
>> talking about a ciphertext created using one of the algorithms
>> available in gpg.
>>
>> Let's say, purely for example, that the passphrase is the ever
>> powerful "qwertyuiop" that's been brought up here.
>>
>> If the attacker has figured out that "qwer" is a part of the
>> passphrase can that attacker read any of the ciphertext? If so, how
>> much? Does that knowledge of some of the passphrase allow the
>> attacker to figure out the rest of it?
>>
>> And, pretty much on this same subject, could an attacker tell what
>> kind of data is encrypted in a file? Can they tell if it's a binary
>> or a plaintext file that's encrypted?
>>
>> Can they tell much about the contents of the ciphertext at all
>> without having part of the passphrase, or a part of the session key?
>>
>> Could the attacker figure out a frequency of characters, or tell
>> that some particular characters are used in a ciphertext without
>> having the passphrase or session key?
>>
>> Would a nation state attacker be able to figure out much from a
>> ciphertext created using one of the algorithms available in gpg?
>
>
> One thing to add to what the others are saying, is that without
> padding, one thing that you *can* see in an encrypted message is its
> length.  So if you know Alice regularly sends Bob a message that says
> "all quiet on the western front", and you suddenly see a message that
> isn't 30 bytes long, you can assume something is happening that Alice
> is reporting to Bob.  The very existence, and frequency, of traffic is
> also an indicator, as is who's communicating, even if you can't read
> the messages.
>
> Merely encrypting the message so that it cannot be read does not mean
> you aren't leaking information to an adversary - it's just not the
> *contents* of the message.
>

Here is an example from a more recent war (seen from Eve's perspective):

According to one version of events, Osama bin Laden (Bob) was allegedly
tracked down by stalking a courier carrying messages to and from his
hideout.  The content of the messages was apparently not compromised at
the time, simply the fact that someone was taking extreme measures to
hide the communications between suspected Al Q leaders (Alice) and a
single, highly secured house in Pakistan.  The simple fact that this
communication was occurring and the level of security at that house was
enough to make the US (Eve) believe that house contained the #1 Al Q
leader and launch a high risk attack.  Only when they actually stormed
the house did they get final confirmation that their target was there
at all.  Then they proceeded to gather up Bob's copies of messages and
keys.


Enjoy

Jakob
-- 
Jakob Bohm, CIO, Partner, WiseMo A/S.  https://www.wisemo.com
Transformervej 29, 2860 Søborg, Denmark.  Direct +45 31 13 16 10
This public discussion message is non-binding and may contain errors.
WiseMo - Remote Service Management for PCs, Phones and Embedded

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#32601

On a sunny day (Tue, 6 Oct 2015 08:01:34 +0200) it happened Jakob Bohm
<jb-usenet@wisemo.com> wrote in
<O4mdnUKu4ecj_o7LnZ2dnUU78SOdnZ2d@giganews.com>:

>leader and launch a high risk attack.  Only when they actually stormed
>the house did they get final confirmation that their target was there
>at all.  Then they proceeded to gather up Bob's copies of messages and
>keys.

Did not they get DNA confirmation from some Pakistani doctor working under-cover?

I tell you something about 'leaking'.
just by reading that ?? mind I concluded:
 Osama was in the back of a house on the first floor, but got the location wrong:
 
 https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/sci.physics/Re$3A$20Strongest$20confirmation$20yet$20of$20Einstein$27s$20GTR|sort:relevance/sci.physics/8HV0BDAeDVs/3yOARc8zCS4J

Sep 19 2006

Osama was killed:
 May 2, 2011
 
And I am not even claiming to be a what is it called ?? mind-reader.
But when somebody has it playing on the top of their mind I will know.
There is also such a thing as common (do not exactly remember that psychology book, not my field) consciousness.

 Nothing you can know that is not known (Beatles).
And, in MNSHO past present and future are illusions of our 'existence'.
It is said, think it was Feynman (who I do not really agree with, but OK),
that an anti-particle is mathematically equivalent to a 'normal' particle moving backwards in time.
If you take that for true, then we are always in a cross field from past and future,
so receiving data (stimuli) from past as well as future.
But that could just as well be quack science.
Kwantuum Computahs? you have NO idea what really is possible.

:-)

We _are_ living in a world of quack science, just like hundreds of years ago earth was flat (by dictate!), epicycles explained
the motion of the planets, now quantum crap...
In that posting referenced above in sci.physics I argued (for the so many's time) against Einstein's 'gravitational waves'.
Now see this, mm 9 years later, right again:
 http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2015/sep/25/where-is-the-cosmic-rumble-from-merging-black-holes
But they do not let go of Einstein's religion! Oh no, he _must_ be right...
No matter if experiment proves him wrong.

No hope for a thousand years -or longer- the dinos came and went too.
:-)

[This posting] Will probably send some more to Russia...
LOL

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#32608

PA7PTL <PA7PTL@panteltje.com> writes:
<snip>
> I tell you something about 'leaking'.
<snip>
> And I am not even claiming to be a what is it called ?? mind-reader.
> But when somebody has it playing on the top of their mind I will know.
> There is also such a thing as common (do not exactly remember that
> psychology book, not my field) consciousness.

An interesting method of attack.  Will it work for Eugene Styer's recent
challenge?  If he thinks hard about the content at some specified time,
will you be able to share that consciousness?

<snip>
-- 
Ben.

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#32611

On Tuesday, October 6, 2015 at 6:22:30 AM UTC-4, Ben Bacarisse wrote:
> 
> An interesting method of attack.  Will it work for Eugene Styer's recent
> challenge?  If he thinks hard about the content at some specified time,
> will you be able to share that consciousness?
> 
> <snip>
> -- 
> Ben.

I should have a tin-foil hat around here somewhere...

Although to be honest the posted ciphertext was encrypted quite a while ago,
so I would have to look to see what the actual plaintext is.  The algorithm
is a different matter

Styer

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#32606

On 06/10/15 04:39, Robert Wessel wrote:

<snip>

> One thing to add to what the others are saying, is that without
> padding, one thing that you *can* see in an encrypted message is its
> length.  So if you know Alice regularly sends Bob a message that says
> "all quiet on the western front", and you suddenly see a message that
> isn't 30 bytes long, you can assume something is happening that Alice
> is reporting to Bob.  The very existence, and frequency, of traffic is
> also an indicator [...]

...as is its absence. Armies are like kids. If they go very quiet, it 
means they're up to something.

-- 
Richard Heathfield
Email: rjh at cpax dot org dot uk
"Usenet is a strange place" - dmr 29 July 1999
Sig line 4 vacant - apply within

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#32612

[At the risk of repeating what others have said, let me repeat
what others have said]

On 2015-10-05 12:02:46 +0000, Anonymous Remailer (austria) said:

> After seeing all of the cryptanalysis on the ng recently it occurs
> to me to ask, [...]

You are seeing cryptanalysis of "pre-modern" ciphers. The kinds of
things in the "Happy Birthday" puzzle uses design principles from 100
years ago only (other than the fact that it operates on bytes (or
perhaps bits) instead of on letters.

All of the flaws in the toy ciphers that are being exploited are
things that the world moved away from once it became abundently clear
how easily they can be broken.

> just how much can an attacker figure out from a ciphertext? What if
> he or she has some of the passphrase? Here I'm talking about a
> ciphertext created using one of the algorithms available in gpg.

A key (or a passphrase) is an "all or nothing thing" in a modern
cipher (like those used by GPG). If the passphrase is off by a single
bit, decryption fails completely.

Of course an attacker who knows most of your password might take
guesses at the remaining portions, but there is no sign or
information leak from getting close to the right passprhase.

> And, pretty much on this same subject, could an attacker tell what
> kind of data is encrypted in a file? Can they tell if it's a binary
> or a plaintext file that's encrypted?

They can tell its (approximate) length. And they may be able to make
some guesses based on things other than the actual content. For
example, an encrypted file named

 my-plan-to-shoot-the-president.docx.gpg

might provide some hint that it is a Microsoft Word document.

> Can they tell much about the contents of the ciphertext at all
> without having part of the passphrase, or a part of the session
> key?

Again, no. Getting the right key is an "all or nothing" thing.
However, let me state again that if, say, an attacker has 88 bits of
a 128 bit key, then they only have to guess at the remaining 40 bits,
testing each one. Such an attack is definitely feasible.

So you don't want part of your key or part of your passphrase to be
known. But there is no way for an attacker to know that they have
"60% of the key". A key that is a little bit wrong produce totally
wrong results.

> Could the attacker figure out a frequency of characters, or tell
> that some particular characters are used in a ciphertext without
> having the passphrase or session key?

No. Not for any serious cipher deployed in the past 40 years.

> Would a nation state attacker be able to figure out much from a
> ciphertext created using one of the algorithms available in gpg?

<PedanticMode>
"Nation state" is not the appropriate term for "country." It is a
term that applied to those countries that were created as being
states for a particularly "nationality", and so does not apply to any
multi-ethnic country.
</PedanticMode>

The short answer to your question is "No".

There is no reason to believe that any government, including the US,
is capable of performing a partial break on something encrypted with
PGP/GnuPG.

But

... A motivated attacker willing and able to put lots of resources
into learning the content of such traffic may well be able to learn
stuff by going around the crypto. Generally the cryptography is the
strongest part of the system, so an attacker will go around it. This
may be by tampering with the computers of some of the parties; going
after the message either before it is encrypted or after it is
decrypted; installing monitoring equiptment near the targets (for
example a camera that watches a computer screen), etc.

Quite simply, an attacker would rather spend tens of thousands of
dollars going around the encryption than tens of millions in a vain
attempt breaking the crypto.


And (as others pointed out), there is "traffic analysis"

Even though the contents of a message are not leaked, the existence
of a message is.

But to return to your original question, when something is properly
encrypted with a cipher designed in the past 40 years, there is no
way to draw any conclusion (other than its existence and length)
about the content of the message from its ciphertext,

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#32616

On 06/10/2015 18:22, Jeffrey Goldberg wrote:
>...
>
> <PedanticMode>
> "Nation state" is not the appropriate term for "country." It is a
> term that applied to those countries that were created as being
> states for a particularly "nationality", and so does not apply to any
> multi-ethnic country.
> </PedanticMode>
>

<USEnglishMode>

The US English term "nation state" in the context of security analysis
explicitly represents the meaning of the word "state" that refers to a
(potential) direct member of the United Nations, such as the USA, the
Russian Federation, the German Federal Republic, the United Kingdom
etc.; As opposed to the use of the word "state" in reference to large
administrative regions within such a "nation state", for example the
individual member states in the USA, the "autonomous republics" in the
Russian Federation, the "Länder" in the German Federal Republic or the
four main parts of the United Kingdom (England, Scotland, Wales and 
Northern Ireland).

This word usage stems from the fact that within the USA, the word
"Nation" refers to the USA as a whole, while the word "State" refers to
the individual States that formed or later joined the United States of
America.

This is of cause directly opposite from how the word "nation" was
originally used to refer to an ethnically and geographically defined
people regardless of it having obtained individual independence as its
own state on the World stage.  And how that word is still used in
reference to the various native American peoples existing within the
overall borders of the USA.

"(potential)" above refers to the fact that this phrase may also be
used in reference to (enemy) states that have been denied membership in
the United Nations.

</USEnglishMode>

 > ...


Enjoy

Jakob
-- 
Jakob Bohm, CIO, Partner, WiseMo A/S.  https://www.wisemo.com
Transformervej 29, 2860 Søborg, Denmark.  Direct +45 31 13 16 10
This public discussion message is non-binding and may contain errors.
WiseMo - Remote Service Management for PCs, Phones and Embedded

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#32663

On 2015-10-06 18:12:44 +0000, Jakob Bohm said:

> On 06/10/2015 18:22, Jeffrey Goldberg wrote:
>> ...
>> 
>> <PedanticMode>
>> "Nation state" is not the appropriate term for "country." It is a
>> term that applied to those countries that were created as being
>> states for a particularly "nationality", and so does not apply to any
>> multi-ethnic country.
>> </PedanticMode>
>> 
> 
> <USEnglishMode>
> 
> The US English term "nation state" in the context of security analysis
> explicitly represents the meaning of the word "state" that refers to a
> (potential) direct member of the United Nations,

Really?

// Looks it up

[Expletive deleted]

Well, I stand corrected!

Thank you. Though I am tempted to claim that that standard and common
usage is wrong, wrong, wrong. Everyone is using the term wrong except
for me!

Or perhaps this is all a plot to make me doubt my sanity. Yes, that must
be it. And you are in on it! I can tell.

Jeff (looking for a rock to crawl under) Goldberg

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#32664

On 08/10/15 01:21, Jeffrey Goldberg wrote:

<snip>

> Well, I stand corrected!
>
> Thank you. Though I am tempted to claim that that standard and common
> usage is wrong, wrong, wrong. Everyone is using the term wrong except
> for me!

That happens to me a lot.

> Jeff (looking for a rock to crawl under) Goldberg

It does everyone good to be wrong occasionally. It's good exercise for 
some rarely-used muscles, such as the humiles.

-- 
Richard Heathfield
Email: rjh at cpax dot org dot uk
"Usenet is a strange place" - dmr 29 July 1999
Sig line 4 vacant - apply within

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#32684

On 2015-10-08 05:33:09 +0000, Richard Heathfield said:

> On 08/10/15 01:21, Jeffrey Goldberg wrote:
> 
>> Jeff (looking for a rock to crawl under) Goldberg
> 
> It does everyone good to be wrong occasionally. It's good exercise for 
> some rarely-used muscles, such as the humiles.

Oh, I have plenty of practice being wrong. It's just that that the 
smugness of my original "correction" is what I'm embarrassed about. Not 
actually being wrong.

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#32686

On 09/10/15 04:21, Jeffrey Goldberg wrote:
> On 2015-10-08 05:33:09 +0000, Richard Heathfield said:
>
>> On 08/10/15 01:21, Jeffrey Goldberg wrote:
>>
>>> Jeff (looking for a rock to crawl under) Goldberg
>>
>> It does everyone good to be wrong occasionally. It's good exercise for
>> some rarely-used muscles, such as the humiles.
>
> Oh, I have plenty of practice being wrong. It's just that that the
> smugness of my original "correction" is what I'm embarrassed about.

Ha! That goes with the territory. It's when I'm at my most 
high-and-mighty that I turn out to be wrongest.

> Not actually being wrong.

The Fonz helped me out here. Many, many, many years ago, there was a 
"Happy Days" episode where the Fonz was forced to say something like this:

"I was wr. I was wrooooo... I was wrrrrrrrrr... I was 
wr-wr-wr-wr-wr-wr-wr-... I was wro-wr. [Pause, deep breath.] I was Not 
Right."

-- 
Richard Heathfield
Email: rjh at cpax dot org dot uk
"Usenet is a strange place" - dmr 29 July 1999
Sig line 4 vacant - apply within

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#32649

Thanks to all for the replies. I'm glad to learn that modern gpg 
type crypto is this secure.



Paranoid in Palookaville

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