Fractal cryptography

[CVL staff member Nate Sammons]

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writes Hal Finney:
>
>Now, maybe this particular fractal cryptosystem idea will actually work
>well.  I don't know; I haven't seen it.  But the point is that these
>complex types of systems have not provided a good foundation for crypto-
>graphy in the past.
>

(First, sorry for bringing up an old subject, I was at SC93, and now
have 500 messages to surf through)

I read an article in Electronic Engineering Times a while back (summer, I 
think), about some researchers doing encryption with chaos...  they had
two decryption chips (I think they used DSPs) that had a synchronized 
chaotic stream going between them, which they both used to [en,de]crypt
the data...  

This seems kind of silly, since (assuming an intelligent adversary),
they could just tap the chaotic flow, and start listening...

Am I missing something?

- -nate

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| Nate Sammons  nate at VIS.ColoState.Edu  (303) 491-1578                  |
|   Colorado State University -- Computer Visualization Laboratory      |
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