Hi, In a message dated 97-05-28 04:39:24 EDT, you write: << Actions such as yours inspire trust in the cryptographic software that you write, if it passes the review. >> Thank-you very much. By the way, I realize that increasing the size of the encrypted file used for the contest is unnecessary and actually makes decryption easier in most cases. I'll let everyone @ toad.com know that the original encrypted message was "cut" and "pasted" over and over again to increase the final message to 50,000 bytes. So, there's is *decrypted* data repetition. (I know, it's was a stupid thing to do, but I believe in VSA2048's security, obviously.) However, as you probably have discovered, none of the *encrypted* data repeats or show any congruent/linear pattern. (In fact, there is no pattern whatsoever.) Also, along with the simple decryption tool, a simple flowchart of VSA2048 will be released that will show that VSA2048 is NOT is as simple as many seem to think. (No, it's not just a random XOR-er. Take a look at the VSACMProcessOperation and VSACMInternal functions. If it were simply a random XOR-er, the data could probably be decrypted in a few days, if even that long.) I truly hope that all of the cypherpunks out there are working on cracking the CRACKIT.DAT file used for the decryption contest or have worked on decrypting it but just gave up. (Contest details will be posted every now and then to cypherpunks@toad.com and other crypto-related mailing lists.) I realize that many of you out there live to take snake-oil crypto off the face of the planet. Not that it is snake-oil, but take a shot at hacking VSA2048. (Use your Crays, Delta, UNIXs, sync-ed Pentiums, mainframes, whatever. We don't care.) Regards, DataET Research