Re: Fractals, Cellular Automata, and Encryption

[Mutant Rob <wlkngowl@unix.asb.com>]

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Interesting point. I've dabbled with CA a little bit, though not in terms
of crypto.  I think at best CA can be used for stream ciphers... and
a big problem is that people assume it's a totally new form of computing,
when in fact it's only a different form, and anything that can be done
with a conventional formula-based scheme can be done with CA and visa-
versa... the pitfall is that one can get all caught up in how chaotic CA
behaves and lose sight that the same thing can be done in a formula, and
that possibly it can be easily broken.

Fractals are interesting. I've thought about using the Julia-set
iterations as a form of crypto (or for that matter, recursive methods
in general)... maybe a kind of block cipher that works with complex
numbers, but using the words as fractions rather than whole numbers.
Perhaps using 64-bit binary fractions, and iterating X = X^2 + C, where
the iteration count and C are keys... using the result as a kind of
stream cipher.  Problem is it would be slow on most machines.

I've also thought about genetic algorithms.  An interesting ideal would
be a genetic algorithm that operated on plaintext, key, ciphertext but
would be self-analyzing and evolve itself in ways to make cryptanalysis
difficult.

- --Rob
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