Simple, you just check whether the header, data structure, metadata, checksum, etc. in the trial-decrypted data in valid, no hack is needed. For example, someth

Simple, you just check whether the header, data structure, metadata, checksum, etc. in the trial-decrypted data in valid, no hack is needed. For example, something as simple as a 16-byte magic number can ensure a false positive rate of 1/2^128. Since any arbitrary binary data can be encrypted, "this is mostly ASCII" is unusable. In GPG: /* if KeyID is empty... */ if (!k->keyid[0] && !k->keyid[1]) { log_info (_("anonymous recipient; trying secret key %s ...\n"), keystr (keyid)); } err = get_it (ctrl, k, dek, sk, keyid); k->result = err; if (!err) { /* If get_it() succeeds */ if (!opt.quiet && !k->keyid[0] && !k->keyid[1]) { log_info (_("okay, we are the anonymous recipient.\n")); } } And in get_it()... if (sk->pubkey_algo == PUBKEY_ALGO_ECDH) { /* Now the frame are the bytes decrypted but padded session key. */ if (!nframe || nframe <= 8 || frame[nframe-1] > nframe) { err = gpg_error (GPG_ERR_WRONG_SECKEY); goto leave; } } else { if (padding) { if (n + 7 > nframe) { err = gpg_error (GPG_ERR_WRONG_SECKEY); goto leave; } } if (n + 4 > nframe) { err = gpg_error (GPG_ERR_WRONG_SECKEY); goto leave; } if (dek->keylen != openpgp_cipher_get_algo_keylen (dek->algo)) { err = gpg_error (GPG_ERR_WRONG_SECKEY); goto leave; } /* Copy the key to DEK and compare the checksum. */ csum = buf16_to_u16 (frame+nframe-2); memcpy (dek->key, frame + n, dek->keylen); for (csum2 = 0, n = 0; n < dek->keylen; n++) csum2 += dek->key[n]; if (csum != csum2) { err = gpg_error (GPG_ERR_WRONG_SECKEY); goto leave; } } You get the idea. BTW, did I just "break GPG encryption and deanonymize users" according to Cellebrite because I found the correct function in the code? And no, I didn't "review dozens of code classes", I just grepped the word "anonymous"... /s