[Info-vax] What to do with my VAX.....

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 11/11/2020 8:54 PM, Dave Froble wrote:
> On 11/11/2020 6:56 PM, Alexander Schreiber wrote:
>> seasoned_geek <roland at logikalsolutions.com> wrote:
>>> ALL
>>> ENCRYPTION is security by obscurity. Period.
>>
>> Thus proving nicely that you know _absolutely_ nothing about encryption.
>> You imight want to read up on Kerckhoff's principle for starters.
> 
> Well, I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss that statement.
> 
> Isn't not knowing a solution a form of obscurity?  Otherwise, if one 
> knows the key, then there is no security, right?  So not knowing the key 
> is sort of "security by obscurity"?
> 
> There have been multiple instances in the past of codes being broken and 
> harmful affects because of that.  The Japanese code in WWII?
> 
> What is a "secret key", other than "unknown data"?  Can such a key be 
> guessed?  Unlikely.  But possible.

Security by obscurity has a very specific meaning.

It is when the security depends on the algorithm being kept secret.

This is generally considered bad.

And none of the standard algorithms today use it.

You can open any text book on encryption and see the algorithms
for AES, RSA etc. and they are still prohibitively difficult
to crack.

AES 256 bit has a 256 bit key. That is 2 power 256 possible keys.
That is a big number.

Arne