6 ms·
I was wondering about this, too. To put even more paranoia at the table: Readable ASCII means that every byte is in a certain range. For example, bit 7 is 0 fo
by vog 10y ago
I was wondering about this, too. To put even more paranoia at the table:
Readable ASCII means that every byte is in a certain range. For example, bit 7 is 0 for every byte. Maybe this allone enables a backdoor.
That is, the mere fact that this is readable ASCII could enable a backdoor. Who knows?
- loup-vaillant 10y agoThis theory probably contradicts the usage of block cipher in counter mode. With them, the input block is usually full of zeros. This constraint has strengthened ciphers in the past. DJB wrote somewhere that some block cipher were broken in CBC mode (all the bock can be controlled by the attacker), while CTR mode was still safe (many bits forced to zero).
- tptacek 10y agoNo, it does not. You're taking this notion of constrained values out of context. ASCII strings in crypto constructions are very common; for instance, they provide domain isolation in hash constructions (where you have a single hash function applied to inputs of different sensitivity, and want to mint multiple logically unrelated hash functions from the one you have). They're also common in versions. The ASCII we're looking at here is conceptually a hash input. It's not a part of the design of the hash core itself.