Re: Introduction me

From	Rich <rich@example.invalid>
Newsgroups	sci.crypt
Subject	Re: Introduction me
Date	2015-10-14 22:02 +0000
Organization	My Linux Box
Message-ID	<mvmjd6$dtv$1@dont-email.me> (permalink)
References	<9abd4bb5-a4a2-4504-96e5-dba3ac39cdc6@googlegroups.com> <mvjtg0$tjc$1@speranza.aioe.org> <mvk0hh$mf0$1@dont-email.me> <mvmiv7$oqq$1@speranza.aioe.org>

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Chris M. Thomasson <nospam@nospam.nospam> wrote:
> > "William Unruh" wrote in message news:mvk0hh$mf0$1@dont-email.me...

> > > On 2015-10-13, Chris M. Thomasson <nospam@nospam.nospam> wrote:
> > > wrote in message
> > > news:9abd4bb5-a4a2-4504-96e5-dba3ac39cdc6@googlegroups.com...
> [...]

> > > WRT ASCII, I basically had to make the online version of my cipher 
> > > convert a
> > > plaintext into a series of
> > > hexbytes in ASCII so that a user would not get a bunch of trash in the
> > > ciphertext:
> > >
> > > http://funwithfractals.atspace.cc/ffe
> > >
> > > IMHO, I think encrypting the plaintext into a ciphertext of hexbytes wrt 
> > > the
> > > online version is a good thing
> > > because a user can easily take a look at every byte of the ciphertext.

> > And why does the user waht to look at any byte of the ciphertext?
> > Sounds like a pretty pointless exercise.

> That is fair enough William.

> I can easily turn off the hexbyte conversion process, but then the
> ciphertext will be a bunch of ?gobbledygook? that is not going to be
> pleasing to the eye of somebody who wants to visually examine it. What
> if a user wants to examine the ciphertext directly without having to
> look at a bunch of random symbols and non-printable characters directly
> in the webpage?

*Users* will *never* want to look at the ciphertext.  They will only
care about looking at the decrypted message that comes from decrypting
the ciphertext.

Cryptanalysts are the *only* people who will ever want to look at the
ciphertext.  And there are already numerous tools to allow them to do
that without looking at random character gobbledygook (i.e., xxd,
hexdump, od, etc.).

Because of the existance of these tools (xxd, hexdump, od, etc.) the
encryption/decryption module should *never* care about conversion
to/from a human readable format.  There are already tools to perform
that task, for the small subset of individuals who will *ever* want to
perform that task.

> Ahhh! I should make this an option, perhaps via checkbox that will
> allow a user to see the hexbytes if they want to.

No, you should drop the idea entirely, and simply allow individuals who
wish to examine the ciphertext to use the tools they *already* have
available to do just that.

> FWIW, I converted the ciphertext into hexbytes in ASCII because I
> liked the way Richard Heathfield presented his ciphertext challenges
> to this group. It worked great!

It was necessary for posting to the group to insure that various NNTP
transports and viewers did not corrupt the data.  If the NNTP
transports were all guaranteed 8-bit clean (they are not), the postings
could have been in raw binary and everyone would have been able to make
use of them.  Do not confuse a need to encode to ascii for a transport
medium with the encryption algorithm, the two are different, and should
not be mixed together into one module.  Let the encryption/decryption
module do it's thing, and let the user attach an ASCII encode/decode
module when such is necessary.

> What do you think about using a checkbox that allows a user to generate
> ASCII hexbytes or raw output dumped into the ciphertext textarea?

A very bad idea.

Thread

Introduction me eaglesondouglas@gmail.com - 2015-10-12 10:26 -0700
  Re: Introduction me Rich <rich@example.invalid> - 2015-10-12 17:45 +0000
    Re: Introduction me eaglesondouglas@gmail.com - 2015-10-13 08:28 -0700
      Re: Introduction me William Unruh <unruh@invalid.ca> - 2015-10-13 16:09 +0000
      Re: Introduction me Rich <rich@example.invalid> - 2015-10-13 16:19 +0000
  Re: Introduction me William Unruh <unruh@invalid.ca> - 2015-10-12 17:46 +0000
    Re: Introduction me Karl-Uwe Frank <karl.frank@freecx.co.uk> - 2015-10-12 21:19 +0200
      Re: Introduction me Rich <rich@example.invalid> - 2015-10-12 20:24 +0000
        Re: Introduction me Johan Wevers <johanw@vulcan.xs4all.nl> - 2015-10-13 10:08 +0200
          Re: Introduction me Rich <rich@example.invalid> - 2015-10-13 16:20 +0000
          Re: Introduction me Rich <rich@example.invalid> - 2015-10-13 16:24 +0000
            Re: Introduction me Nomen Nescio <nobody@dizum.com> - 2015-10-14 16:20 +0200
  Re: Introduction me Ribeiro Alvo <ribeiroalvo@gmail.com> - 2015-10-13 03:58 -0700
  Re: Introduction me "Chris M. Thomasson" <nospam@nospam.nospam> - 2015-10-13 14:35 -0700
    Re: Introduction me William Unruh <unruh@invalid.ca> - 2015-10-13 22:28 +0000
      Re: Introduction me "Chris M. Thomasson" <nospam@nospam.nospam> - 2015-10-14 14:54 -0700
        Re: Introduction me Rich <rich@example.invalid> - 2015-10-14 22:02 +0000
          Re: Introduction me gordonb.loovx@burditt.org (Gordon Burditt) - 2015-10-15 02:39 -0500
            Re: Introduction me William Unruh <unruh@invalid.ca> - 2015-10-15 08:00 +0000
          Re: Introduction me Richard Heathfield <rjh@cpax.org.uk> - 2015-10-15 13:14 +0100
            Re: Introduction me "Chris M. Thomasson" <nospam@nospam.nospam> - 2015-10-15 12:13 -0700
              Re: Introduction me "Chris M. Thomasson" <nospam@nospam.nospam> - 2015-10-15 12:35 -0700
              Re: Introduction me Rich <rich@example.invalid> - 2015-10-15 22:34 +0000
                Re: Introduction me "Chris M. Thomasson" <nospam@nospam.nospam> - 2015-10-16 01:15 -0700
                Re: Introduction me William Unruh <unruh@invalid.ca> - 2015-10-16 18:02 +0000
                Re: Introduction me wizzofozz <oscxxxxxxxaas@gmail.com> - 2015-10-16 20:30 +0200
                Re: Introduction me Rich <rich@example.invalid> - 2015-10-16 20:09 +0000
                Re: Introduction me "Chris M. Thomasson" <nospam@nospam.nospam> - 2015-10-19 14:45 -0700
              Re: Introduction me William Unruh <unruh@invalid.ca> - 2015-10-15 23:16 +0000
        Re: Introduction me William Unruh <unruh@invalid.ca> - 2015-10-14 22:48 +0000
  Re: Introduction me eaglesondouglas@gmail.com - 2015-10-14 08:03 -0700
    Re: Introduction me omnilobe@gmail.com - 2015-10-14 10:23 -0700
      Re: Introduction me William Unruh <unruh@invalid.ca> - 2015-10-14 17:34 +0000
  Re: Introduction me eaglesondouglas@gmail.com - 2015-10-15 07:21 -0700
  Re: Introduction me Jeffrey Goldberg <nobody@goldmark.org> - 2015-10-18 12:56 -0500
    Re: Introduction me MM <mrvmurray@gmail.com> - 2015-10-18 11:44 -0700
    Re: Introduction me rpw3@rpw3.org (Rob Warnock) - 2015-10-18 18:57 +0000
      Re: Introduction me Jeffrey Goldberg <nobody@goldmark.org> - 2015-10-19 17:52 -0500

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