17 Dec
2003
17 Dec
'03
11:17 p.m.
Karl Barrus wrote:
Well, you do have to be careful: a large number of keys doesn't mean a cipher is hard to break, there may be a faster method than brute force. For instance, those cryptograms some papers print in the puzzle section are a simple substition cipher, with 26! keys... yet they are also pretty much trivially breakable with enough input.
Quite true! However, as I pointed out, I tried very hard to eliminate all such possibilities that would allow simplifying the key search process. It's also very easy to modify the program to support a larger key and additional encryption rounds.