From: "Perry E. Metzger" <perry@snark.imsi.com>
Date: Wed, 20 Apr 94 09:58:35 PDT
To: Ethan D Schartman <es5c+@andrew.cmu.edu>
Subject: Re: What the heck is this? Optical noise encryption?
In-Reply-To: <0hhJpdu00awQ43bWUj@andrew.cmu.edu>
Message-ID: <9404201658.AA08337@snark.imsi.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



Ethan D Schartman says:
> One solution to this problem might be to use a recursive equation to
> generate a source from a small (one-hundred+ digit)  seed, and the
> number of iterations necessary to reproduce the source.  The nice thing
> about this is that the equation could also be customized, something 
> like: x= (k)(x^2)+a,  where "a" and "k" are constants that may be

And at this point I've just built an ordinary PRNG+Xor based stream
cipher and the usual techniques to break it all apply.

All this "encryption with chaos" stuff just adds up to "look at my
fancy PRNG", which of course is a game that crypto people have been
playing for a long time. I'm starting to get alarm bells go off every
time "chaos" is mentioned.

Perry