Compress before encrypting? (Was Re: NSA Helped Yeltsin...)

[Jay Prime Positive]

   Date: Mon, 30 May 1994 16:53:32 +0200
   From: Alastair McKinstry <amck at maths.tcd.ie>
[...]
   While this is true, don't forget the usefulness of known plaintext
   for brute-force analyses. If you're doing a brute-force search
[...]
   Costs: <$20 million (see Schneier) and this then makes breaking DES
   keys (for example) trivial, if they all have the plain text.
[I presume Alastair ment to say] ...the same known plain text.
[...]

Ah yes.  Well, the state of the art in cryptanalysis (as far as I
know) just moved forward a notch. =)

j'