From: Theodore Ts'o <tytso@Athena.MIT.EDU>
Date: Thu, 11 Mar 93 21:55:35 PST
To: thug@phantom.com
Subject: Re: [CRYPT: Dingaling Denning & random # generators]
In-Reply-To: <m0nWzoe-000josC@phantom.com>
Message-ID: <9303120554.AA28908@SOS>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


   From: thug@phantom.com (Murdering Thug)
   Date: Thu, 11 Mar 93 21:49:43 EST
   
   And don't tell me they can
   build computers that can distinguish between a PGP file transmission
   and some 
   hormone crazed 15 year old dork downloading the latest GIF of Cindy Crawford
   or a ZIPed ware.  I've looked at hexdumps of GIFs and ZIPs and for all
   practical purposes they look about as random as PGP data.  If the NSA
   can build a parellel computer that scans all the trunks in the U.S.
   simultaneously AND can tell the difference between PGP streams and ZIP/GIF
   file data streams, then I just might as well go and shoot myself right
   now.

Er.... you might want to get your gun out..... the middle of hexdumps of
GIF's and ZIP's and PGP files may look the same, but the file headers
are quite distinguishing.  If you want to hide encrypted data, each
person needs to find their own way of doing it ---- if everyone hides it
in the low bits of a GIF file, it would be very simple for the NSA to
scan GIF files to see if the low bits looked like the header of a PGP
file.....

						- Ted