-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Interesting point. I've dabbled with CA a little bit, though not in terms of crypto. I think at best CA can be used for stream ciphers... and a big problem is that people assume it's a totally new form of computing, when in fact it's only a different form, and anything that can be done with a conventional formula-based scheme can be done with CA and visa- versa... the pitfall is that one can get all caught up in how chaotic CA behaves and lose sight that the same thing can be done in a formula, and that possibly it can be easily broken. Fractals are interesting. I've thought about using the Julia-set iterations as a form of crypto (or for that matter, recursive methods in general)... maybe a kind of block cipher that works with complex numbers, but using the words as fractions rather than whole numbers. Perhaps using 64-bit binary fractions, and iterating X = X^2 + C, where the iteration count and C are keys... using the result as a kind of stream cipher. Problem is it would be slow on most machines. I've also thought about genetic algorithms. An interesting ideal would be a genetic algorithm that operated on plaintext, key, ciphertext but would be self-analyzing and evolve itself in ways to make cryptanalysis difficult. - --Rob - --- [This message has been signed by an auto-signing service. A valid signature means only that it has been received at the address corresponding to the signature and forwarded.] -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 Comment: Gratis auto-signing service iQBFAwUBMT+FpSoZzwIn1bdtAQHg9QF+OhSfJi0WIPB1Lqg5ne7f8mYYvow7yl5k 0gJh0KHaCEJZUcwhmRZ1uWlDlExcx+Q/ =sgLv -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----