Matthew J Ghio says:
hfinney@shell.portal.com (Hal Finney) wrote:
There have been some discussions on sci.crypt within the past few months on nonlinear/chaotic algorithms and their use in cryptography. Fractal cryptography sounds like it might be related. The problem is that unless an algorithm was SPECIFICALLY DESIGNED to prevent an intelligent adversary from defeating it, the chances of it being an effective cryptosystem are limited. Just because nonlinear systems produce complex-looking results does not mean that these results are unpredictable given enough data.
Yeah, but how much data? Just because something can be solved given enough data doesn't help me break it if I need 10^37643254 bytes of data to do it.
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. Perry