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Re: (fwd) Re: NSA Helped Yeltsin Foil 1991 Coup



On Fri, 27 May 1994, Eli Brandt wrote:

> > From: "Perry E. Metzger" <[email protected]>
> > > If you suspect that some of the non DOD/NSA cyphers might be broken,
> > > but you are not ready to employ one-time-pads, then you should
> > > threshold you mesages into N parts so that all N are needed to recover
> > > the original.  Then encrypt each part under a different cypher.
> > 
> > Its far simpler to encrypt your message with multiple systems, one
> > after another, than to break it up in the manner you suggest, and the
> > security is in fact better that way than in the manner you suggest.
> 
> Why?  If you XOR-split the message and encrypt each mask differently,
> you are /guaranteed/ that all of the encryption methods must be
> broken to retrieve the original.  If you use repeated encryption,
> this is much harder to prove, and not always true.  There's a result
> that if you choose the first cipher unwisely, you're hosed no matter
> what you do on top of it.
> 
>    Eli   [email protected]
I think the second poster assumed what I did - that the message would be 
split into say 5 parts, each to be encrypted differently.  How to X-or 
split the message isn't obvious to me - pnrg? If you use some bytes 
conveniently hanging around you may as well use a OTP, since both ends 
need the same bitstream.  Unless I'm missing something, which is usually 
the case.

	David  [email protected]