From: Matthew J Ghio <mg5n+@andrew.cmu.edu>
Date: Fri, 12 Nov 93 18:39:42 PST
To: pmetzger@lehman.com
Subject: Re: Fractal cryptography
In-Reply-To: <9311130031.AA03966@snark.lehman.com>
Message-ID: <cgt4T_G00awS0WfEhN@andrew.cmu.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


"Perry E. Metzger" <pmetzger@lehman.com> wrote:

> Amateurs regularly develop systems and claim fantastic things for
> them. They then turn out to be trivial to break. This has made people
> who are even semi-pro like some of the folks on this list shake their
> heads and say "oh no, not another one" every time someone who hasn't
> read the literature claims to have come up with "the new great
> cryptosystem". This is the reason that people tend to be so skeptical
> of the constant stream of new proposals from such individuals. Its
> nothing personal -- its just the sort of jaded attitude you get when
> this sort of thing happens repeatedly.

This is true.  If you were specifically referring to the example I
posted, it could probably be broken from the data presented if you
really put your mind to it.  However it is a fairly clever PRNG, and it
takes quite a bit of data to get the exact pattern.

It might not be feasible to create a cryptosystem using fractals and
chaos functions, but I think the possibility could be explored a bit
further...