From: Grand Epopt Feotus <68954@brahms.udel.edu>
Date: Wed, 20 Apr 94 13:15:21 PDT
To: wcs@anchor.ho.att.com
Subject: Re: What the heck is this? Optical noise encryption?
In-Reply-To: <9404201724.AA10742@anchor.ho.att.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.3.89.9404201609.A4009-0100000@brahms.udel.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


On Wed, 20 Apr 1994 wcs@anchor.ho.att.com wrote:

> > 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.
> 
> Yeah.  On the other hand, chaotic stuff like Mandelbrot and Julia sets
> are good for generating lots of pretty pictures to hide steganography
> under, as long as you leave out the coordinates you're generating from.
> 
	I think even still it would be unwise to steno anything into a 
picture that is mathematically generated.  A picture such as a scanned 
one, or perhaps another less rigid graphic would be a better idea.  It 
may only be a small difference that it makes, but if your playing for 
keeps, well you know.
	The talk of chaos etc..  usually peeves me sometimes because it 
has turned into a buzzword really.  Be careful what you call chaotic, 
cause it could be something else just buzzed into that category.  Hmm 
actually a chaotic attractor would be detrimental to a PRNG, so at best 
maybe it's a good idea to stay away from functions that are porven to 
have attractors sicne your random numbers would be drawn in.  one example 
I can think of is the Ikeda attractor.  It's incredibly complex and you 
can never tell where the next iteration will pop up, BUT you always no 
it's inside the attractor, that is after you throw out the first few 
iteration while it is pulled in.
	I am taking  acourse in Chaos Theory this semester, and I'll be 
sure to ask the prof about this application.


	You're eqipped with a hundred billion nueron brain, that's
	wired and fired, and it's a reality generating device, but
	you've got too do it.  Free youself  ----Tim Leary----