Re: GeeK: Re: Rivest's Chaffing and Winnowing

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Philicious (philen@monkey.org)
Mon, 23 Mar 1998 17:45:18 -0500 (EST)


On Sun, 22 Mar 1998, Matt Blaze wrote:

> It's a cute idea. While it's not clear that it's especially
> practical as described, it does provide a nice proof-of-concept
> that traditional encryption isn't the only way to achieve message
> secrecy. It also illustrates a basic internal conflict in government

Highly impractical, if you ask me. Chaffing single bit packets results in
a message 200 times larger than the original ('each wheat packet may end
up being, say about 100 bits long, but only transmits one bit' -Rivest).
Not only that, but how cheaply can one generate all those wheat packet
MACs, not to mention believeable chaff packet MACs.

Perhaps chaffing half-byte packets would be secure enough (only
quadrupling the size of the message), but I am skeptical.

Still, it is a nifty idea with interesting legal implications.

        -phil


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The following archive was created by hippie-mail 7.98617-22 on Fri Aug 21 1998 - 17:16:11 ADT