256-bit encryption for Twitter posts

[Ted Smith]

<http://www.soepgarnaal.com/shrimp7/?p=42>

256-bit encryption for Twitter posts

As i announced yesterday, the new version of shrimp7 (31) support
compression for your Twitter, Facebook and Friendfeed posts. With that
technique you will be able to post messages that are longer then 140
characters. When i implemented message compression i had the idea to
implement a AES-256bit encryption method for shrimp7 version 32. I use
the same principles as the compression method i use. After encryption
Ibll add 2 characters in front of the string so applications could
recognize compressed or encrypted messages. These applications can
filter out this messages, or can offer a solution to decompress/decrypt
the message. When a compressed or encrypted message is found by shrimp7
it will show a lock-icon. For encrypted messages there is a possibility
to click on the lock-icon, fill in the key and read the original 12
billion $ message.

The characters i use for compressed messages are . and ! , for example:

.!test 4, shrimp7 coD
rD
sed tweets. How manyDharsDD& DD0in?
ID-utf8D0orkD3gD5C$B8B
C&B5B7.DtheD0eaE
er
iD-badDlittlEE
undEDD>mDWaE
E
 fD> rE,n!
WEwonD$D>E!E
E<10D)D+D-nD"

For AES encrypted messages i chose the . and ? , then a message could
look like this:

.?WsSMSoaGhoZFjHZzQzx7iOZ
+GKmXXcyD
hq0iEBExlReVG2f0ACO256i84cOC7QlxO/txTuRdkQwL
+fBGZlcUQBQoDHLLm/3cFbEEW3ZU8I/CD63wfgpGbAx+eH9oPAmVyYv14Y=

Using longer messages then 140 chars is not Twitters goal but there are
cases that it will be very handy. The idea for encrypting messages is
more easy: nobody can read the message unless they have the key to
decrypt the message. Handling a key to the user who need to read the
encrypted message is the most weakness in cipher/key encryption so be
careful while crossing the dessert to deliver a key to your friend!

Message encryption is not intended for use by criminals. There are
certainly cases that encryption on networks like Twitter can be a life
saver. To optimize encrypted messages shrimp7 also compress encrypted
messages. The compression for encrypted messages works really bad, but
winning 1 char is better then losing 1 characters.

[demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature which had a name of signature.asc]