[965] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: Dorothy and the four Horseman
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Phil Karn)
Fri Jun 6 20:07:06 1997
Date: Fri, 6 Jun 1997 14:48:02 -0700 (PDT)
From: Phil Karn <karn@qualcomm.com>
To: dee@cybercash.com
CC: cryptography@c2.net
In-reply-to: <Pine.SUN.3.91.970606155214.10145A-100000@cybercash.com>
(dee@cybercash.com)
>Didn't someone once espouse the theory that on your disk with ciphertext
>you should also include a file which when xor'ed with the ciphertext
>produces one of Shakespeare's plays....?
Yup. I first thought up that idea many years ago while sitting at a
Bellcore/telco security conference listening to phone cops and US
attorneys beating their chests about how many doors they'd busted in
and how many computers they'd seized. Perhaps the idea wasn't original
with me, but I did come up with it independently.
My original version used War and Peace as the sample innocent
plaintext, but of course any sufficiently large literary work will do.
Some have suggested that it ought to be something more sensitive yet
still legal for you to have, such as an archive of your tax returns.
I don't condone system cracking any more than the next guy, but
hearing those guys go on and on about busting heads really started to
get to me.
Phil
